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EDITED BY 
WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON 



SAINTS' LEGENDS 

BY 

GORDON HALL GEROULD 



SAINTS' LEGENDS 



GORDON HALL GEROULD 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN PRINCETON 

UNIVERSITY 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1916 






COPYRIGHT, I916, BY GORDON HALL GEROULD 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published September iqib 




©CI.A438593 



K. F. G. 




PREFACE 

j|N the pages that follow I have tried to 
write the history of saints' legends as one 
part of the survey of English literature to 
be presented by the series of which this vol- 
ume is a member. My difficulties have been many. Al- 
though the lives of saints began to affect the vernacular 
literatures of Europe as soon as such literatures came into 
being, and although legends in the vulgar tongues were 
everywhere exceedingly popular until modern times, they 
have been little studied, at least in their relations to one 
another and to their historical backgrounds. I have had, 
as a matter of fact, no model for this book, since no such 
study has hitherto been made for any of the European 
literatures. I have had at once the pleasures and the 
pains of mapping out a new region. I can only hope that I 
have escaped some of the errors to which the pioneer in 
cartography is liable. 

Furthermore, it has required a good deal of patience to 
disentangle what I can only describe as the snarl of 
legends from the later Middle Ages. Here, again, other 
scholars have given me little help, though I must grate- 
fully acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Horstmann, 
who by his indomitable zeal in editing texts has done more 
than any other one man to make my study possible. His 
work has never been recognized at its true worth, nor has 



viii PREFACE 

he ever received his due meed of praise. Considering the 
mass of his publications, one can excuse their faults of 
haste and disorder. At the same time, in reviewing his 
work, as well as in dealing with much else that has been 
published with regard to individual legends or groups of 
legends, I have found caution very necessary. The study 
of special problems has constantly retarded the progress of 
the book. That many of them I have had to leave un- 
solved goes without saying, though I have been working 
towards this volume for more than ten years. Yet I beg 
my readers to believe that I have not expressed opinions 
unfortified by study. If in respect to certain legends that 
have been much discussed, like the Cynewulfian poems, 
my views are novel, it is perhaps because my approach 
has been consistently from the point of view of the type 
itself. 

What I have said is partly by way of extenuation : it is 
meant neither as defiance nor complaint. My one desire 
is that others may come, through reading this book, to see 
the nobility of the impress that saints' legends have made 
on our literature, as I have come to see it. The story is, 
for the most part, of a day long past, but its significance 
remains. I have tried to show that legends are dry and 
dusty merely because the dust has been allowed to settle 
upon them. The dryness, I fancy, is merely a matter of 
ourselves, in any case. 

As many acknowledgments as possible to studies that 
have aided me I have made in the text. To other scholars 
whose work I have used, but have not specifically men- 



PREFACE ix 

tioned, I wish to express my thanks in equal measure. I 
must, moreover, take occasion to pay my tribute to Pro- 
fessor Napier, of Oxford, who has died while the sheets 
of this book have been going through the press. To him I 
owe my first impulse to the study of saints' legends, and 
to him I had hoped to submit this volume in all humility. 
The field was his more than any other man's, just as a 
searching knowledge of the earlier periods of our literature 
in general was more completely his than any other 
scholar's. To Professor Neilson, of Harvard, I wish to give 
my thanks for suggesting this book in the first instance, 
for not pressing me to finish the task in haste, and for read- 
ing the proof. To several of my colleagues at Princeton 
I am indebted for criticism by the way, but particularly 
to Professor Root, who read the completed manuscript. 
Lastly, my gratitude is due to my wife, who has taken 
pains both with manuscript and proof, to the betterment 
of both. 

G. H. G. 

Princeton, July, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

I. Definition and Use ... * 1 

II. Origins and Propagation 17 

III. The Epic Legend in Old English 55 

IV. Prose Legends before the Conquest ... 94 

V. New Influences: France and the Cult of the 

Virgin 128 

VI. The Conquest to the Reformation. I 

LEGENDARIES AND SAINTS' LIVES IN WORKS OF 
HISTORY AND EDIFICATION 151 

VII. The Conquest to the Reformation. II 

THE COURSE OF THE LEGEND 204 

VIII. Saints' Lives in Drama 294 

IX. The Reformation and Since 313 

Bibliography 349 

Index 377 




SAINTS' LEGENDS 

CHAPTER I 

DEFINITION AND USE 

110 write the history of saints' lives as they 
I have appeared in English literature requires, 
first of all, a working definition. It is easy 
j enough to say that legends of the saints 
occupy a place apart from other literature by reason 
of their subject-matter. From the point of view of the 
casual observer, they are merely a specialized form of 
biography, written sometimes in verse and sometimes in 
prose; varying in their content from the most severely 
critical history to the most wildly fantastic fiction; and 
intended either to instruct the reader in the veritable 
deeds of great leaders of men or to edify him by exam- 
ples of the beauty and power of holy living. Yet as a 
specialized form of biography merely, this various mass 
of literary works does not constitute a type that could 
justifiably be treated in the present series. Conglomerate 
as it is, there must be discoverable some bond of union 
between the diverse content and form of its members 
that will permit us to trace its course from iElfric to 
Chaucer, from Chaucer to Alban Butler. Otherwise, it 
cannot be regarded as a genre at all, and the lives of 



2 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

saints must be relegated to one or another field of nar- 
rative, where, on the basis of external treatment, they 
may chance to find a proper resting-place. 

There need be no argument to prove that a definition 
by subject-matter or by form would be inadequate. Both 
of these elements vary and shift from author to author, 
as from age to age. With regard to the former, one might 
as well try to discuss under a single heading all accounts 
of battles in English literature, from the Old English 
Finnesburh to Thackeray's description of Waterloo, as to 
attempt to unite on the basis of material the fifteenth- 
century Christina Mirabilis with Professor Bury's Life of 
St. Patrick. With respect to form, moreover, what pos- 
sible link can there be between the rhapsodical march 
of Cynewulf 's Elene and the haltingly pedestrian prose of 
the Blickling Homilies, though they were written in the 
same general period? By these paths, it is evident, we 
shall come to no workable definition of legends as a type. 

Nor is it permissible so to limit the field of inquiry as to 
include merely works of a certain class or time, and thus 
to simplify the problem. It would be easy to say, for 
example, that only such lives as were in some degree 
touched by the spirit of wonder or romance should be 
considered, or that poetical legends only should be in- 
cluded; but the standard would be foolish, arbitrary, and 
of no profit. Saints' lives of whatever content and form 
demand equal consideration, since they must all be repre- 
sentatives of the type, if such a type exists. Works of 
edification as well as works with the real or ostensible aim 



DEFINITION AND USE 3 

of teaching history have a claim to the name of legend, in 
this sense. Imagination and sober narration hold the field 
together. In the words of one of the most learned and 
clear-sighted of the modern Bollandists, M. Delehaye: 
"A new genre develops, which is concerned with biog- 
raphy, with panegyric, and with moral instruction. " 

A definition by origins is not less impossible than a defi- 
nition by subject-matter or by form. As the reader will 
discover from the chapter following this, if he does not 
already know, the sources of legends are as various as the 
forms they have taken, and the manners of their genesis 
differ almost as widely as the materials out of which they 
have grown. Though convention, in the shape of for- 
mulae, has always been beloved of legend-makers and 
legend- writers, it has operated with such free scope that it 
offers no clue to the identification of the type. East and 
west, under conditions and influences of the most widely 
varying sort, uncontrolled save by a prevailingly genuine 
desire to advance the interests of the Church, the acts, pas- 
sions, and miracles of the saints have come to the knowl- 
edge of men and have been recorded. They have been a 
solace, an inspiration, and a moral force in the history of 
the world; but they cannot be described or limited by the 
terms of their origin. Place, time, and environment are 
important factors in their development, but not the 
factors that determine the essential qualities of their 
being. 

With all these customary and normal criteria for de- 
termining the nature of a literary type discarded — the 



4 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

standards of substance, of form, and of origin — the 
reader may with good reason inquire whether saints' lives 
can properly be said to constitute a genre at all. I should 
answer the query by saying that they can be, and are to 
be, so considered, though the difficulties of differentiation 
from other types need not be concealed. In point of fact, 
the definition of them as a type must be psychological 
rather than formal. It depends upon the causes of their 
development and the influence of their propagation on 
the human mind rather than upon the elements of their 
constitution. More than almost any other form of liter- 
ature, the legends of saints are associated with a particu- 
lar attitude on the part of their makers towards the visible 
and invisible phenomena of existence. They are, in the 
nature of the case, ecclesiastical, but not narrowly so; ' 
they are moral of tendency, but not didactic; they incul- 
cate piety, but do not of necessity teach doctrine. They 
take for granted the infinity of God's power and, almost 
equally, the dignity of man. They demand reverence of 
maker and hearer alike, but they do not require supersti- 
tious credulity. Though many of them are stained by 
ignorant and unworthy associations, as a type they are 
inspirers of purity and militant guardians of the integrity * 
of the human soul. Individualistic as is their tendency (a 
trait they hold in common with all biography), they yet 
represent the solidarity of man's endeavor towards the 
power outside himself that makes for righteousness. 
Thus the view of history exemplified by them is that the 
forward movement of the world has been hastened by 



DEFINITION AND USE 5 

great leaders, but by leaders working with and for their 
followers, and always under the guidance of the divine 
hand. Widely as the ideals of human conduct differ, as 
set forth in the stories of the Egyptian anchorites and of 
men like Gregory the Great or Thomas of Canterbury, 
the legends show a common aspiration towards an un- 
worldly goal. Whether in fantastic apologue and parable 
or in sober narration of well-authenticated history, the 
lives of the saints represent the search not only for good- 
ness but for truth. 

This constant attitude of mind on the part of those 
responsible for the composition of saints' legends makes 
it possible to formulate a working definition of these 
legends as a literary type, though not as a formal type. 
An absolute definition, difficult to make in the case of 
almost every genre, seems out of the question here, where 
the product is so various and the development so influ- 
enced by changing factors. The saint's legend is a bio- 
graphical narrative, of whatever origin circumstances may 
dictate, written in whatever medium may be convenient, con- 
cerned as to substance with the life, death, and miracles of 
some person accounted worthy to be considered a leader in 
the cause of righteousness; and, whether fictitious or his- 
torically true, calculated to glorify the memory of its subject. 

In considering ecclesiastical legends as a literary type, 
one is not primarily concerned, of course, with their his- 
torical accuracy. One views the product as it stands, the 
result of complex forces operating through long periods of 
time, and takes it for what it is worth. Without altogether 



6 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

neglecting questions of history, we are here concerned for 
the most part with questions of literature. For our pur- 
pose, the legends of St. George and St. Christopher in 
their later stages are of as much interest as the authentic 
acts of St. Perpetua and Bede's account of St. Cuthbert. 
We may find profit in the inquiry whether such persons as 
St. George and St. Catharine of Alexandria actually ex- 
isted; but since their lives have been written and rewrit- 
ten, expanded and elaborated, our chief business is with 
the tissue of imaginings that constitutes their legends. 
The lives thus composed have at any rate real existence, 
whether or not the characters behind them lived in the 
actual world or only in the cumulative fancy of passing 
generations of believers. The legends themselves are our 
proper material for study. 

In point of fact, with reference to the older saints at 
least, it almost seems as if the influence and popularity 
of saints were in inverse ratio to their authenticity. Cer- 
tainly the most veracious accounts of the early martyrs 
now extant concern those saints who have not enjoyed 
the widest and most enduring celebrity. Without pushing 
the statement to the limits of absurdity (for abundant 
redactions of a life, even though much embroidered, some- 
times make possible an arrival at historical truth), it is 
incontestable, as M. Delehaye admits, that "historical 
tradition has been more difficult to guard in the most 
frequented sanctuaries than anywhere else." As in the 
case of secular heroes, unveracious stories were more 
likely to grow up about those heroes of the Church whose 



DEFINITION AND USE 7 

personalities and supposed powers attracted the widest 
notice and the deepest veneration. 

Notwithstanding the fact that the lives as they were 
written, and not as the modern historian would have 
had them written, are the proper and only possible ma- 
terial for a study of the legendary type, it must not be 
forgotten that we are dealing with a form of biography. It 
will not do to treat legends, even when studying the. part 
they have played in literature, simply as so much fiction. 
They are too real, and their connection with the histori- 
cal events of the past is too intimate, to permit us thus to 
discard all thought of the actual. Even when they are 
most nearly allied to romance, they differ from tales pure 
and simple by their attachment to history and topogra- 
phy. Some saints owe their existence to archaeological 
misunderstandings, and some to reminiscences of pagan 
myth, as we shall see; but no saint in the calendar lacks 
a local habitation and an historical background. 

In writing a history of saints' lives as they have ap- 
peared in English literature, the international aspects of 
the type cannot well be ignored. In spite of the local at- 
tachments of the particular legends, the type can never 
be altogether isolated as a racial or regional growth. 
Most literary genres, however widely cultivated, have 
had an individual, if not altogether independent, develop- 
ment in various national literatures. Not so with the 
legend. At least a due proportion of Englishmen have 
been canonized, and many of them have been very widely 
revered outside of England; but their lives cannot be said 



8 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

to possess extraordinary qualities that distinguish them 
from the lives of saints who were born in other lands. 
Moreover, the primary accounts of even the most charac- 
teristically national figures were written not in the ver- 
nacular but in Latin. The career of Thomas of Canter- 
bury had without doubt a most important influence on 
the history of England; yet his followers, like Edward 
Grim and John of Salisbury, wrote their narratives of his 
martyrdom in the language of the Church universal. His 
memory thus became a heritage of the world at large, and 
his legend, in this sense, no more a part of English litera- 
ture than of the literatures of France or Iceland. 

Thus with all saints, early or late, there is no clear line 
of demarcation in the matter of language. Though hosts 
of them, unlike Thomas, were celebrated only locally, 
their lives were in the first place usually set down in Latin 
rather than in the vernacular of the place where they 
dwelt. Latin, and to a less extent Greek, became the pre- 
vailing medium of legends, while other languages adopted 
and adapted such lives as seemed likely, for reasons of 
popular veneration or instructional value, to appeal to 
the unlearned. 

Can it be possible, then, to trace the history of the leg- 
end in English or any other vernacular literature? Has it 
had a growth sufficiently independent to make worth 
while the effort to show its stages of development? A 
separate existence, even in the partial sense that is true 
of ojJher types, it has not possessed. Never but once did a 
school of legend-writing grow up in England to make 



DEFINITION AND USE 9 

English legends, in any way, so peculiarly a national prod- 
uct as English tragedy became in the Elizabethan period; 
and that school soon passed. Yet saints' lives have had a 
long and varied course in the history of English letters, 
with marked variations in manner from time to time and 
with equally well-marked times of florescence. Depend- 
ent at almost every step for materials and even for style 
on models which were foreign at least in language, the 
genre has yet blazed a distinguishable trail that may be 
followed by and for itself. More frequently than is the 
case with most types, one must view the legend in its in- 
ternational relations, for only by this means can one get a 
proper sense of perspective; but one is justified in study- 
ing the national product by itself, and even in temporarily 
isolating it. 

Another problem, immediately connected with the one , 
just discussed, is this : how much attention should be paid 
in an account of English lives of saints to legends written 
on English soil and by natives of Great Britain but in 
Latin or French? The question is complicated by the fact 
that both these languages can scarcely be regarded as 
foreign to the writers and readers of saints' legends at the 
times when the type was most influential. To neglect 
legends written under purely native inspiration because 
the authors chose to put them in a tongue that was 
equally familiar to them with English, and that had to 
their minds greater dignity, would make us lose sight of 
important links in the development of the type. At the 
same time, it would be inconvenient to give an account of 



10 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

all the lives in French or Latin that happened to be writ- 
ten on English soil. The safest procedure seems to be to 
include those that can be shown to have had any marked 
influence on the genre, whether by way of inspiration to 
other writers or as necessary factors themselves in the 
story of the type. 

Whatever may be true of saints' lives in other litera- 
tures, in English the genre is prevailingly mediaeval. 
Coming in with the dawn of Christianity on the horizon 
of our Germanic forefathers, it flourished without inter- 
mission through the political and religious changes of the 
eight following centuries and declined only at the Refor- 
mation. Slight as was the religious character of that 
movement in its first stages, it was accompanied by so 
many revolutionary phenomena and resulted in such far- 
reaching alterations in the fabric of the national life that 
for some centuries thereafter the legend had a precarious 
and almost negligible existence. Though still beloved by 
a minority, it did not retain sufficient hold on the people 
at large to make its continued life a factor of importance. 
The attitude of mind had changed; and popular sym- 
pathy, without which no literary form can have real 
vitality, was diverted. Catholic in a broad sense the 
legend must always be, as our definition above-stated 
demands; and catholicity of temper was not a marked 
trait of the centuries following the Reformation. The 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed a gradual 
return on the part of an influential section of the public 
to habits of thought long neglected and, with this return, 



DEFINITION AND USE 11 

a partial recrudescence of legend-writing. Without fully 
recovering its vitality and with considerable change in 
its nature, it has been regaining little by little its lost 
place in literature. Yet, when all is said, the type that 
we are studying can best be observed in the Middle Ages. 

It is on this account that one does well to approach the 
lives of saints with as few prepossessions against the 
mediaeval spirit as may be. In studying their origins and 
determining the historical truth of their narratives, of 
course, whatever aid can be found in modern scientific 
method must be used fearlessly. A shattered tradition is 
not to be weighed against the truth. But in appreciating 
the position of legends in the past, their worth and influ- 
ence in the light of a former day, one must, as far as 
possible, regard them as did the men of that time. From 
this point of view, which I believe to be the correct one 
for the historian of the genre, fable has no less worth 
than veracious narrative. In tracing the progress of a 
literary type that has, historically speaking, often been 
nourished on error, the mistake would be to lose sight 
of the goal in a continual estimation of truth or falsity. 

The legends were written, it is true, as history, and 
were so accepted by the world of believers; but it must 
not be forgotten that to the Middle Ages, as to antiquity, 
history meant something very different from what it 
means to us. Cicero and Quintilian define the historian's 
task in phrases that make us, who vaunt our scientific 
spirit, recoil with horror. To them literary effect was the 
paramount consideration; critical investigation of fact 



12 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

was of secondary importance. Where certain knowledge 
was procurable, the author's plain duty, as conceived by 
Tacitus or Bede, was to record the facts veraciously; but 
he might permit himself to heighten effects when his 
sense of literary art demanded, and he had no notion of 
ascertaining the truth by patient sifting of evidence. 
Thus, in the case of legend writers, style for the most 
part was substituted for research, and error, once ad- 
mitted, had small chance of subsequent detection. 

The question is sometimes asked whether all persons 
in the old times believed the crudely fabulous tales that 
were related about so many saints. When the answer is 
given, as it must be with assurance, that even the best- 
educated men seem to have held faith in some of these 
things, the most unfavorable inferences are drawn as to 
their intelligence. Such contempt is unworthy and re- 
flects no credit on those who feel it. Let the reader con- 
sider how far his unaided acumen would penetrate the 
mists of the world; and let him remember that the tend- 
ency to rely on authority, which has been of incalculable 
benefit to the race, fostered just such belief. At the same 
time, it seems clear that, all along, certain independent 
and outstanding spirits held the right to doubt. Professor 
Gtinter calls attention to the striking fact that the great 
theologians of the Middle Ages never rested their schol- 
arly speculations on evidence drawn from the miracles of 
the saints. Presumably they regarded these wonders as 
matters of faith rather than of knowledge. Furthermore, 
there has always been shown by the greater writers a 



DEFINITION AND USE 13 

tendency to discriminate between different classes of 
legendary stories and to discard the baser sort. 

The saint's legend is, indeed, a literary type; but it has 
never been purely aesthetic in aim or divorced from prac- 
tical uses in the uplifting of humanity. Beauty it has not 
lacked, but the grace it has most cultivated has been the 
beauty of holiness. At times it has reached great eleva- 
tion of form, but it has depended for its effects less upon 
that than upon loftiness of sentiment. The work of edi- 
fication has never been long absent from the minds of its 
makers. Its power has rested in the visions of righteous- 
ness that it has brought to the minds of common men. 
The straightforward narratives in the earliest authentic 
acts and passions, which still stir the reader, must have 
thrilled to the soul the distant co-religionists of the mar- 
tyrs, to establish whose faith they were written. In the 
widely separated missions of the early Church it was suffi- 
cient to have the local calendar read without narrative 
attachment to recall to the minds of the worshippers the 
deeds of those who had lived and suffered for the true 
belief. In this way such calendars and martyrologies came 
into use as part of the services of the Church. 

As time went on, the mass of tradition accumulated. 
Saints were soon celebrated in churches and countries 
other than their own; and martyrologies into which their 
names were adopted naturally added brief accounts of 
their lives. After the fifth century at the latest, as is 
evidenced by Caesarius of Aries and Gregory of Tours, 
complete legends, instead of passages from the martyr- 



14 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

ologies, were read on the festivals of saints; and after the 

eighth century they became a regular part of the service 

at nocturns. Thence grew the practice of making col- 

i lections of legends in the language of the Church. By 

I the tenth century the use of legends in place of sermons, 

I or as an addition to sermons, became common, which led 

to translations and to collections (or legendaries) in the 

vernacular. Isolated stories, usually known as exempla, 

many of which were derived from the lives of saints, 

I came into great vogue as a result of the same tendency 

in homiletics. The growing cult of the Virgin in the later 

; Middle Ages accompanied this movement and fostered 

the growth of encyclopaedias of pious tales. 

Meanwhile, outside the use of legends, and of incidents 
from the legends, in the churches and the cells or refec- 
tories of conventual establishments, there was a con- 
stant and increasing demand for the written records of 
the saints wherever the knowledge of reading became 
common. As a medium for the instruction of the young 
in the ecclesiastical schools, and for the amusement and 
edification of adults in abbey, castle, and town, they 
were used and beloved. As single works or in collections, 
they thus reached a wide public by double means, not 
only through the services of the Church but also through 
the reading and the hearing of them as polite literature. 
The chronicles, moreover, in all times contained accounts 
of the saints that were both read for themselves and used 
as sources for other lives. Further down in the social 
scale, legends furnished the peasant with recreation, 



DEFINITION AND USE 15 

when read to him or recited to him — perhaps by some 
of the vagabonds who were his mental superiors and his 
social equals; and they gave him new materials for fire- 
side tales. All classes found lives of saints to their liking, 
nor was it the fashion to consider them dull. They were 
an excellent substitute for fiction, but they were more 
than fiction. 

Legends thus became fairly early a powerful instru- 
ment for teaching religion and morality. They were, 
moreover, not without their political uses. Vision litera- 
ture, which is often to be identified absolutely with that 
of saintly lives, was used with powerful effect by the 
Church. Appeals to saints through visions, and visions 
attributed to saints, not infrequently restrained and con- 
trolled secular rulers, when more direct means would 
have been ineffectual. This combination of religious and 
political literature is not altogether to be attributed to 
pious fraud, for very often real mystical enthusiasm thus 
found vent. Uncritical as was the spirit that prompted 
and accepted it, there is nothing despicable about its 
course as a whole. In the career of St. Catharine of 
Siena, for example, it was truly admirable. Prophecy 
has never been considered an illegitimate method of 
leadership. 

The legend thus permeated the religious, social, and 
political fabric of the Middle Ages. Whatever its abso- 
lute worth, it was for many centuries one of the most 
influential branches of literature. However much the 
world may have benefited by the causes that led to its 



16 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

decay, we must regret that the type suffered in the change. 
Latter-day revivals, even in non-Catholic countries, 
seem to show that saints' lives still have a meaning and a 
value, though they now appear in new and more criti- 
cal forms. 




CHAPTER II 

ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 

IN studying the origin of saints' lives the 
primary distinction to be made has to do 
with the saints themselves. On the one hand, 
there are the saints of undoubted authen- 
ticity, as to whose real existence there is no shadow of 
suspicion. Whether their cults were established by lawful 
canon of the Church or grew up irregularly, their his- 
torical position is assured. Some of them were martyrs 
and missionaries of the primitive Church, some bishops 
and princes of the age of Catholic supremacy, and some 
men of pious zeal who lived in centuries not very remote 
from our own; all along the way are found such sentinels 
of the truth. On the other hand, the hagiological record 
contains a multitude of other figures, perhaps equal in 
number to the first class and, from the point of view of 
the legend, of no less influence and value, who are in 
different case. Either there is grave doubt whether they 
had historical existence, or it is certain that they never 
actually lived. From every century till the later Middle 
Ages these saintly phantoms are reported. They were 
not, for the most part, fabrications consciously invented, 
any more than most fabulous legends were forgeries; but 
they arose from mistakes in the use of evidence and from 
popular imaginings. 



18 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

In the legends concerning these two classes of saints 
there is often the most marked similarity, due partly to the 
unconscious imitation of the true by the false, and partly 
to the fact that the stories related of perfectly authenti- 
cated characters are often as untrustworthy as those 
clustering about purely fictitious persons. Indeed, it is 
a grievous error to suppose that by proving the legend 
of a saint to be false the historical position of the saint 
is invalidated. Certain fabulous elements in the legends 
are conditioned by origins, it is true, and are peculiar to 
the lives of saints whose personal history is either obscure 
or certainly un veracious; but almost every trait in the 
biographies of authenticated saints can be paralleled 
from the tales of the fictitious. The tendencies that 
affected the growth of the one affected the other equally. 

The constitution of the legends, as we find them, is the 
resultant of two main factors: documentary evidence and 
popular imagination. Considering all saints and all 
legends by and large, the one factor is of no less impor- 
tance than the other, for even with the histories of men 
and women, the chief events of whose lives are perfectly 
substantiated, the myth-making power of the folk has 
been busy. Whatever is spurious in them is, to a very 
great extent, due to the unconscious workings of the 
popular mind. Back of the written record lie the tales of 
country-side and town, which sprang up about the real 
or supposed personalities of the saints. That they grew 
quickly is shown by the fact that immediate followers of 
church-leaders, men who had known the subjects of the 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 19 

biographies they were writing, often gave as literal truth 
stories that have all the hall-marks of fiction. Thus 
the marvels reported of Christina Mirabilis, a Belgian vis- 
ionary of the thirteenth century, though she was per- 
sonally known both to the famous bishop and cardinal, 
Jacques de Vitry, and to her biographer, Thomas de 
Chantimpre, exceed those of almost any other saint. 
They are partly the record of psycho-pathological phe- 
nomena, partly the grotesquely exaggerated renderings of 
such phenomena that became current among a simple- 
minded people. Bertrand of Pontigny, who had every 
opportunity of observing Edmund of Canterbury during 
the latter's exile, in writing the life of the saint includes 
an account of a contest with the devil which is a com- 
monplace of legend. Similarly, Lantfred, a monk of Win- 
chester, recounting in 981 certain contemporary miracles 
of St. Swithin, tells how a prominent citizen encountered 
three supernatural women on the meadows outside the 
walls of the town in broad daylight: a tale that in its 
entirety is not surpassed for wonder throughout the do- 
main of folk-story. 1 These authors were men of more 
than average intelligence and were dealing with events 
of their own times; they reported with obvious sincerity 
of belief stories that found their origin in popular imag- 
inings. Other writers recount such things with more 
reserve, but recount them all the same. "It is credibly 
reported " is a phrase that occurs over and over again in 
the works of the hagiographers. 

1 It is perhaps fair to say that iElfric, when retelling the miracle in 
English a few years later, omits all the introductory marvels. 



20 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Unsubstantiated miracles and unauthentic episodes 
swell the later versions of most legends to an appalling 
degree. Once launched as popular tradition, they were 
sure of acceptance and perpetuation both by writing and 
by word of mouth : by the former because the authors of 
saints' lives in general were content to record what they 
found with as much elegance of diction as they could 
command, by the latter for the reasons that have made 
folk literature the most vital product of the human mind. 
When individual writers of trained discernment accepted 
impossible stories as truth, it is not strange that people 
at large should have believed. As a matter of fact, critical 
sense of any sort is the last quality that one need expect 
to find developed by the throng. Presumably, the folk 
would not be so fertile of imagination, the power that it 
does pre-eminently possess, were it not lacking in the 
ability to criticize destructively. For other genres than 
that of the legend, literature owes much to these qualities 
and defects, so that it is wiser not to despise even their 
grotesque manifestations. 

Along with the general tendency of the people to ac- 
cept report, to embroider narrative, and to invent expla- 
nations, should be mentioned the total ignorance of the 
mass of mankind, in any day, as to the laws of evidence. 
What seems for any reason plausible is believed, whether 
or not it be really in accord with facts that may be per- 
fectly well known. The statements of the first witness to 
be heard are given credence, and no subsequent evidence 
can dislodge the conviction that the events in question 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 21 

happened thus and so. However complete our theoretical 
adherence to the sufficiently commonplace notion that 
even eye-witnesses usually disagree in their accounts of a 
happening, every one of us finds it difficult to hold the 
balance of judgment between them. When this notion is 
ignored, as it has been by all traditional histories, the 
growth of the hero-legend is no matter for exclaim. In 
spite of the spread of education, it flourishes to-day: 
France has its myths of Napoleon, England of Nelson, and 
America of Washington, not to say of Lincoln. Our news- 
papers teem with more or less apocryphal stories. Further 
back, the myth-making power wove whole cycles of epic 
and romance about the persons of kings like Charlemagne 
and Richard Cceur-de-Lion and of less substantial figures 
like Beowulf and Arthur. With the primary object of 
ennobling chosen heroes, it has filched from one to enrich 
another, has jumbled together the most diverse elements, 
and has egregiously distorted chronology. "There were 
once seven churches here," a not unintelligent old woman 
one day said to me in an English village, "but all save this 
were torn down by Oliver Cromwell in the days of William 
the Conqueror." 

The growth of the ecclesiastical legend, as far as popu- 
lar elements are concerned, has been parallel to that of 
the secular myth. There has been the same tendency on 
the part of the followers of the great (and the great, be it 
said, have in this domain happily been for the most part 
the good) to see in their actions the evidence of super- 
natural power; there has been the same ready acceptance 



22 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

of whatever tended to aggrandize their reputation; there 
has been the same curious apathy to contradictions of 
evidence and excesses of fancy. A constant belief in the 
merits of the saints has done much to accentuate tend- 
encies that mere hero-worship would have been sufficient 
to foster. Arthur and iElfred were great figures in the 
eyes of the people, but to Alban and to Thomas Becket 
they could appeal with assurance of aid in difficulty and 
distress. The acts and miracles of the saints were so much 
evidence that they would find in the saints themselves 
mediators with the Ail-Powerful; and they inevitably felt 
towards them more warmly than they could towards the 
old kings of the earth, who represented merely human 
glory. It was the intimacy of personal association that 
attracted, as well as the worship of power. How could 
this fail to stimulate the popular imagination and to 
loosen the reins of fact? 

To discuss the nature of the miracles attributed to the 
saints is not the business of the historian of the legendary 
type. In view of the understanding given this generation 
by a science of the mind that is still groping somewhat 
blindly and must for the present be content with half 
explanations, certain phenomena, which a century ago 
must have been accepted wholly on faith or rejected ab- 
solutely, now appear to the critical mind worthy of entire 
belief. Other deeds and occurrences, equally well authen- 
ticated, must still be matters for faith and skepticism to 
battle over. What can be done is to preserve a tolerant 
mind with respect to what is beyond our understanding, 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 23 

and to apply to all deeds of saints alike the processes of 
investigation that will enable us to say with some measure 
of human certainty that such and such recorded events 
did not take place, while such and such others actually 
did, whether or not the explanation of them found in 
mediaeval works be justifiable or absurd. 1 In such a pro- 
gramme of study, modern scholarship, both Catholic 
and Protestant, is properly united. 

It is a curious fact with reference to the popular growth 
of legend that, in spite of extravagance and lack of critical 
sense, even the most apocryphal of lives have been de- 
veloped with some logical sequence. Except in the very 
late Middle Ages, when they were sometimes put together 
in a purely mechanical fashion, they show what Professor 
Giinter happily calls "the logic of mass." There is a 
causal sequence in the order of events, which gives the 
most unveracious of lives considerable verisimilitude. 
Certain miracles follow certain others in a traditional and 
almost necessary order. This tendency naturally led to 
the use of unmeaning formulas, but of itself was service- 
able to the proper growth of legends. It allied them to 
the folk-story and gave them similar power of self -per- 
petuation; it made them vital as nothing else could, since 
no tale can survive in tradition that does not possess an 
adequate plot. Unlike the plots of most consciously 
wrought fiction, these frequently lack a pivotal situation ; 
but they hold the attention and cling to the memory of the 

1 No unbiased mind can any longer doubt the reality of the stigmata 
of St. Francis of Assisi, for example. 



24 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

hearer by the careful linking of a chain of events. This 
element is most apparent in the case of legends that have 
been most completely dominated by popular tradition. 
Indeed, one would not be far wrong, I think, in saying 
that the folk-element is largely responsible for the greater 
vogue of the more unhistorical saints. There was prob- 
ably action and reaction, the thronging of worshippers to 
a particular shrine giving rise to folk-legend and this, in 
turn, so forming itself as to preserve and magnify the 
memory of the saint. 

The element of documentary evidence is only less im- 
portant in the formation and perpetuation of saints' 
lives than the element of popular imagination. In the 
case of historical characters, it frequently occupies, as of 
course it ought by right always to do, the primary place. 
Hagiographers are, after all, biographers; and, though 
they have sometimes exercised marvellous freedom in 
handling their material, they have never quite given 
themselves over to romance. Whenever it is possible to 
arrive by any means at a first or even second hand ac- 
count, it will be found that the record of events, however 
much embellished with marvels, is tolerably straightfor- 
ward and free from error. The miracles themselves will 
be found to be modelled on scriptural events, in the de- 
sire of the writers to force a parallel to the glory of their 
spiritual masters, or to be the record of phenomena open 
to various interpretations but not impossible of belief. 
Bede's life of St. Cuthbert illustrates both tendencies. 

Not every pretended follower of a saint, however, is to 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 25 

be trusted to give a truthful biography. It would seem 
that authors of saints' lives considered themselves jus- 
tified in pretending that they were companions and dis- 
ciples of the persons about whom they were writing, even 
though they might be some centuries removed in the 
matter of time and many hundreds of miles in point of 
space. At least, they avail themselves of this privilege of 
imposture time and time again. A very notorious case of 
such fabrication is the version of the life of St. Catharine 
of Alexandria which pretends to be the work of Atha- 
nasius, successively the master, convert, and secretary of 
the saint. Now Catharine, if she lived at all, was mar- 
tyred early in the fourth century, and this pseudo- 
Athanasius certainly did not write his legend till the 
sixth or seventh and, most probably, not till the ninth 
century. Whatever the original intention of the writer, 
he was as a matter of course identified with the great St. 
Athanasius, who flourished at Alexandria in the fourth 
century. 

A secondary effect of written upon oral tradition was 
to harden and fix its form. Like folk-literature of every 
kind, legends, as they circulated among the people, would 
be exceedingly fluid in their nature and readily capable 
of union or severance. Once written down, they became 
the literary property of the Church and less liable to 
suffer transformation in such a way as to alter the essen- 
tial plot. Authors might add or subtract, but they did it 
in a more or less mechanical way that left traces of re- 
handling. The best legends with reference to massing of 



26 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

material, it is safe to assert, are those that have suffered 
least from the literary artificer. 

There was still another way by which this written tra- 
dition affected legend. Such versions spread far and 
wide, and were known and used in many ways by clerics 
and laymen. By means of this use they permeated the 
consciousness of the people in general and, by degrees, 
returned to the state of oral tradition. In every country 
of Europe, but more especially in those whose inhabitants 
adhere to the Greek or Catholic faith, are still to be found 
fireside tales of saints, which must have %me to the people 
in the first place through the medium of written docu- 
ments. From the folk to the folk the circle was thus 
rounded. 

Without attempting to make what would be beyond 
the scope of this book, an ordered narrative of the propa- 
gation of saints' lives from the earliest times down through 
the centuries, it will be well to trace briefly some of the 
steps in the progress, which, dealing much with the ma- 
terials of romance, is of itself highly romantic. The sources 
whence the legends sprang and some of the general stages 
of their development need to be borne in mind by the 
reader who is to follow their course in a particular liter- 
ature. Since, as stated above, there is marked similarity 
between the legends concerning saints of best authority 
and those concerning doubtful or invented figures, it is 
not necessary to separate the one class from the other in 
considering the elements of their origin and the chronol- 
ogy of their development. Wherever one class only is 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 27 

affected by a tendency, it will be easy to indicate the 
fact. 

As far as the saints of the primitive Church are con- 
cerned, the greatest credence is undoubtedly to be given 
the relations of eye-witnesses or well-informed contem- 
poraries, and such fragments of legal reports as have been 
preserved. Had we in its entirety the proconsular report 
of the examination of any martyr, we should possess a 
matchless record. Unfortunately, these reports exist only 
as insertions in the passions of a few saints, the bulk of 
which are made up of second-hand relations. Even so, 
they are of immense worth as a standard of comparison 
by which to judge later accounts of the same saints or 
pretended accounts of later saints. If one places side by 
side such reports of examinations by magistrates as those 
contained in the passions of the Scillitan martyrs or 
St. Cyprian, and the academic disputations with the 
Emperor's viceroy attributed to Catharine of Alexandria, 
it is possible to see at a glance that in the former we 
have authentic records while in the latter only exercises 
of intellectual subtlety. The genuine fragments of re- 
ports, by their unadorned simplicity, have the power to 
touch the feelings, since they show brave men facing 
death without ostentation but with superb constancy. 
The records of eye-witnesses, as given in these early, 
authentic acts and passions, have the same straightfor- 
ward character. Consider, in evidence of this, the ac- 
counts of Polycarp, of Cyprian again, or of Perpetua. 
Except in the case of the saint first named, the martyr- 



28 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

doms are accompanied by no marvels that need excite 
distrust in the most skeptical mind; and the wonders of 
Polycarp's death are due only to a natural exaltation of 
spirit on the part of his followers. A vision as to his 
death came to him three days before he was killed; the 
voice of some person invisible encouraged him in the hall 
of judgment; at his execution the fire surrounded him like 
a cloud and did not burn him, but was extinguished by 
the gushing blood when his head was struck off. 

Unhappily, these sober, unmistakably genuine accounts 
of the early martyrs by persons who were sufficiently 
close to them to be well-informed as to their lives are only 
about a dozen in number. The examination to which Pro- 
fessor Harnack has recently subjected the one hundred 
and seventeen articles in Ruinart's famous Acta Sincera 
shows, in agreement with the work of other modern 
scholars, that they are of very unequal value historically. 
Yet, taken as a whole, they present a striking contrast 
to legends in general. The more authentic acts display a 
marked effort on the part of their authors to tell faith- 
fully to the scattered churches the simple story of the 
martyrs' lives and deaths. They certainly represent the 
temper of the earlier Christians in their avoidance of the 
crudely sensational and the unnecessarily controversial. 
Whatever miracles they recount seem to be, for the most 
part, the subjective interpretations placed upon actual 
events by spirits fired with lofty enthusiasm. 

The growth of the legend with its accompanying fea- 
tures was, however, so rapid that no passion written 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 29 

after the fifth century can be trusted to give a veracious 
account of events as they occurred. By that era certain 
forms of torment, certain actions, and certain types of 
speeches had become so fixed a part of every martyrdom 
that even the records of contemporaries were highly 
colored by them, while popular tradition along well- 
established lines prepared an abundance of unhistorical 
commonplaces for later writers. There came to be an 
etiquette of martyrdoms. It is only in the case of saints 
who were not martyrs in the sense of perishing at the 
hands of heathen persecutors, like the English Oswald, 
Edmund, or Thomas, that we find records in any way 
satisfactory. The acts, as distinguished from the pas- 
sions, are somewhat more trustworthy, though it goes 
without saying that, from the first, romantic distortion 
was not confined to the deaths, of heroes. The acts do 
show greater variety, however, and more frequently have 
a basis of fact along with the fictional embroidery. To 
the modern taste they have greater interest and inspira- 
tion, though the men of the Middle Ages appear to have 
taken greater delight in the sensational events which, 
they believed, attended the deaths of the saints. 

Perhaps the most marked influence in bringing about 
the change from the simple veracity of the earliest lives 
to the wild romancing that was prevalent from the sixth 
century onwards was neo-Platonism. The speculations of 
this school furnished a parallel current to the growth of 
legend by means of folk tradition. Indeed, though they 
directly touched only the world of philosophical learning, 



SO SAINTS' LEGENDS 

they seem to have sifted down to the masses and to have 
altered the general conceptions of life held by Christians. 
The theories of Iamblichus the Syrian as to 'the su- 
premacy ( of mind over matter and a transcendental life, 
when translated into more concrete form, were well cal- 
culated to stir the enthusiasm of believers. Without ac- 
cepting in their entirety the conclusions of the late Pro- 
fessor Lucius, one can have no manner of doubt that the 
mystical elements in neo-Platonism had a powerful influ- 
ence in the establishment of the cults of the saints. The 
writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, which 
are first mentioned in the sixth century, make us under- 
stand how the Christian mystics applied the philosophical 
doctrines to the exposition of their religion. They are the 
work of a man who was at once philosopher and enthu- 
siastic mystic, and they were a factor of importance in 
the development of legend from the beginning of the 
sixth century onwards. 

Aside from the authentic acts, there grew up, both 
before and after the influence just mentioned, a series of 
saints' lives that may best be termed historical romances. 
The method by which they developed was the addition 
of the probable to the known. The class is very large and 
has representatives from every century. They are not to 
be called forgeries, for the most part, since they are 
largely the product of cumulative tradition and seem not 
to have risen through the conscious imagining of any one 
person. Two varieties, with reference to their subjects, 
may be recognised. There are, first, the legends that 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION SI 

weave about historical characters a tissue of imagination, 
more or less probable of itself but entirely lacking in 
documentary authority; and, secondly, there are the 
legends that contain in setting and events certain ele- 
ments of historical truth, but none whatever as far as 
the personalities of the saints themselves are concerned. 
From the former class should be excluded, though it is 
difficult to draw the line of demarcation, a large number 
of legends, which have as their subjects real persons 
but which treat them without the slightest verisimilitude. 
These historical romances are not always adorned with 
miracles. Consider, for example, the story of Julitta and 
her son Cyricus, who were said to have suffered in the 
Diocletian persecutions. It has the sobriety and sim- 
plicity of manner that characterizes the most authentic 
passions. Julitta did not court martyrdom; but, when 
face to face with her persecutor Alexander, she repeated 
steadfastly her confession: "I am a Christian." When 
her little son, who was only three years old, had uttered 
the same words in imitation of her and had been slain by 
the furious governor, she went to her own death unat- 
tended by wonders but with unshaken courage. The im- 
possible monstrosity of the tyrant marks the legend as 
romance, but it is fiction of a worthy sort. Sometimes 
these romances are furnished with an abundance of pre- 
tended documentary evidence, which gives them a spe- 
cious air of veracity. The very ancient Passio Sancti 
Procopii, which represents the first stage of a long leg- 
endary progress, admirably illustrates this tendency. A 



32 SAINTS* LEGENDS 

comparison with the brief account of the saint given by 
Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History shows that the pas- 
sion, in spite of the imperial edicts and legal reports that 
it contains, has no authority; yet it only elaborates on a 
basis of fact. 

To the same class of historical romances dealing with 
real persons belong such of the apocryphal legends of 
Christ, of the Virgin, and of the Apostles as are not merely 
tales of fantasy. It was not unnatural that popular imagi- 
nation should busy itself with those periods in the life of 
Jesus which the canonical Gospels left blank, nor that it 
should seek to supply the gaps in the scriptural records 
of Mary and the Apostles. To detail the processes by 
which this was accomplished would take overlong; but 
the works themselves, most of which are accessible in 
English to the reader, show on the most casual perusal 
how tradition worked from the known to the unknown, 
from the actual to the probable. So the childhood of 
Christ was pieced together; the history of the Magi was 
elaborated; incidents of the journey to Egypt were in- 
vented to supplement the curt statement of the New 
Testament; and the life at Nazareth was filled out with 
homely details. These apocryphal stories emphasized the 
humanity of Jesus and found favor by means of combin- 
ing realism with miracle. On the other hand, the additions 
to the life of the Virgin brought into relief, rather, her 
position as the Mother of God,- and became increasingly 
popular as her cult gained influence and authority. In 
the later Middle Ages a host of miracles, most of them 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 33 

fantastic and some of them blasphemous — what are 
known as Mary legends — came to be attached to her 
name. They testify to the power of her cult, while they 
illustrate both the heights and the depths of legendary 
invention. 

The earlier apocryphal acts of the Apostles are his- 
torical romances in the truest sense. Based on scriptural 
hints or scriptural silences, they elaborated the mission- 
ary activities and the passions of the followers of Christ. 
Early in the second century arose a work called the 
Sortes Apostolorum, which told how the Twelve cast lots 
to determine to what country each should go, and how 
they set forth to the various lands thus assigned them. 
Later there grew up a cycle of legends dealing with the 
adventures of particular members of the group. So 
Thomas and Bartholomew in India, Andrew in Scythia 
or Achaia, Peter and Paul in Rome, Philip in Phrygia, 
and the other Apostles elsewhere, came to be the subjects 
of elaborate romances. These later legends were often 
written to celebrate the history of particular churches or 
to express doctrines that the Church deemed heretical, 
though they always remained popular in tone and for 
the most part represented genuine, if mistaken, folk tra- 
ditions. Among such apocryphal writings, condemned by 
Pope Gelasius in the fifth century as heretical and un- 
worthy of belief, one of the best beloved was the romance 
of Paul and Thecla. In spite of the denunciation of the 
Church, this work deserved to retain its popularity, as 
it actually did, for it possessed something of the matter- 



34 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

of -fact simplicity of the authentic acts and recorded even 
the miracle by which Thecla was saved from wild beasts 
in a sententious rather than ecstatic manner. This legend 
really stands on middle ground between the two varieties 
of historical romances above-mentioned. By virtue of the 
appearance of St. Paul it belongs with those dealing un- 
veraciously with real persons, while by the introduction 
of Thecla, as well as by its form, it is to be placed among 
the later, elaborated romances. 

A more adequate representative of the latter class is 
the legend of Catharine of Alexandria. Though the saint 
cannot be shown to have had actual existence, her story 
is by no means out of accord with the times in which it 
is placed. She has been identified with considerable show 
of probability as a legendary transformation of the cele- 
brated Hypatia, though it is equally possible that she 
represents the unnamed Alexandrian lady, mentioned by 
Eusebius, who suffered under Diocletian. The historical 
foundation for the story is confined, in any case, to the 
merest hint; but the setting does not lack verisimilitude. 
Were it not for the harangues of the saint before her 
judges, which are in the worst possible taste, and the 
extravagance of the miracles /that accompanied her pas- 
sion, there would be no inherent improbability in the 
legend. Like this in many respects are the legends of St. 
Cecilia and St. Margaret. The historical residuum in 
both is slight, but the events narrated do not violate 
what may be called the decorum of history. 
N A fertile source for the unconscious creation of new 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 35 

saints is found in the growth of the menologies and mar- 
tyrologies, which by the third century, and perhaps be J 
fore, were read in the churches. The earliest were merely 
calendars, without the addition of biographical details, 
and included none but local saints. From the fifth cen- 
tury onward, however, even local martyrologies contained 
the mention of both foreign and native martyrs, confes- 
sors, and bishops, while general works were compiled from 
these which gathered together without caution or criti- 
cism notices of saints from all lands. The resulting con- 
fusion furnishes many curiosities of hagiological lore. As 
the same saint was not infrequently celebrated on differ- 
ent days by different churches, it is not strange that doub- 
lets and even triplets should have arisen. So we find two 
Martins, one bishop of Tours and one of France, and 
three sets named Cosmo and Damian. Mistaken readings 
of manuscripts gave rise to new saints, like the Tribulus 
who was made from the name of a Phoenician town, the 
Cuminia who came into being from a misunderstanding 
as to the place-name Eumenia, or Amphibalus, the con- 
fessor saved by St. Alban, who was created by Geoffrey 
of Monmouth's mistaking a chasuble for a man. Simi- 
larly, the legend that Pope Eleutherius received a letter 
from a certain King Lucius of Britain, asking for the 
introduction of Christianity into the island, was due to 
a quite natural mistake in interpreting an entry in the 
Liber Pontificalis. Lucius was really a king of Edessa in 
Asia Minor, though he persisted in the English chron- 
icles for many centuries. A not less common result was 



36 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the transference of events from the life of one saint to 
that of another who bore the same name. 

This latter process, however, was not confined to cases 
of simple transference. This grafting of legend upon 
legend, the habit of borrowing from the history of one 
saint to celebrate another, had a variety of forms. Leav- 
ing aside, as we ought always to do, the instances which 
can be proved to have arisen by conscious fraud, there 
are abundant examples to illustrate the tendency of a 
later legend to absorb the matter of an earlier. So Cas- 
tissima and Euphrosyne, Barbara and Irene, Onesimus 
and Alexis, are doublets. Similarly, the earlier version of 
St. Christopher's life was transferred, when it reached 
France, to St. Savinianus of Troyes, who had probably 
lacked a history before. The crucifix, which appeared be- 
tween the horns of a stag at the conversion of St. Eustace, 
is found also in the legends of Hubert, Meinulph of Pa- 
derborn, and Felix of Valois, saints of the eighth, ninth, 
and thirteenth centuries respectively. A case of borrow- 
ing, not very different from the above, in that it relates 
to a vision of Christ, connects the founder and first abbot 
of Vallombrosa, John of Gualberto, with an unnamed 
vassal of Richard I. of England. Each forgave the mur- 
derer of his father and was rewarded by having the image 
of Christ on the altar bow to him, as he knelt in church 
on Good Friday. Roger of Wendover, who tells the latter 
story in his Chronicle, makes King Richard witness the 
scene and forgive the knight for trespass. 

This tendency to transfer and amalgamate gave rise 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 37 

very early to formulae, which were used by popular tradi- 
tion as well as, it must be said with regret, by particular 
hagiographers to embellish certain situations likely to 
arise in the lives of many saints. There came to be for- 
mulae for the disputations of persecuted Christians in the 
face of their judges, for prayers before martyrdom, and 
for martyrdom itself. The legend of Catharine of Alexan- 
dria is the classical example of the first; those of the same 
Catharine, of Barbara, of George, and of Blasius suffi- 
ciently illustrate the second; while instances of the third 
are even more common, though the series of tortures, 
ending in death by the sword, which Clement of Ancyra 
suffered in six cities, perhaps marks the climax of such 
elaborations. A whole class of saints arose, who bore 
their heads after death, Denis and Christopher, for ex- 
ample. Formulae relating to saints other than martyrs 
are scarcely less prevalent. Consider, for example, the 
allegorical dreams by which mothers are informed before 
the birth of their children that they are to be of extraor- 
dinary merit and glory. So Columban's mother saw a 
sun rising from her body that enlightened the world; 
Thomas of Canterbury's mother dreamed that all the 
water of the Thames was running through her bosom; 
while the mother of iEthelwold of Winchester was preg- 
nant, a golden eagle was seen to fly from her mouth. 
It is a temptation to say at once that such stories are 
mere legendary variations of the annunciation of the 
Virgin, somewhat timidly put; but it would be unsafe to 
assert so much, since similar things are told concerning 



38 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the births of secular heroes like Theodoric the Great and 
romance heroes like Galahad. Another excellent example 
of these stereotyped happenings concerns the miraculous 
fashion in which bodies of saints were carried from land 
to land. The bodies of some, like Mamas, Julian, and 
Liberius, were even borne over the sea in stone coffins. 
It is noteworthy that possibly the most famous case of 
the sort, the arrival of St. James the Greater in Spain, 
was an invention of the ninth century. By still another 
formula such widely separated saints as Peter and Pat- 
rick overcame in the same manner the magicians who 
opposed them. Peter caused Simon Magus to fall to the 
earth, when he had lifted himself by devilish art, and 
Patrick, according to Goscelin's life, made away similarly 
with an unnamed Irish wizard. Not uncommonly the 
rays of the sun furnished support either to the garments 
of saints or to the saints themselves. Such a story is told 
in the apocrypha of Christ's childhood; it is related of 
Bridget, Dunstan, Kunegunde, Chad, and at least a 
dozen other saints. 

The names of saints are responsible for certain other 
legends. So in Germany St. Augustine is invoked in 
cases of maladies of the eye (Auge), and in France St. 
Clara with the same purpose, because she makes a person 
voir clair. Undoubtedly, the later legend of Christopher, 
which represents him as bearing Christ across a stream 
on his shoulders, arose from a reverently intended pun 
on his name. For similar reasons Expeditus is the saint 
appealed to in matters that demand haste, and Hippo- 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 39 

lytus became one of the patrons of blacksmiths. Such 
folk-etymologies should excite no wonder, when one re- 
members how it has always pleased the unlearned to find 
a meaning, consonant with its use, in any term that is 
not self-explanatory. Moreover, the tendency so to re- 
solve the names of saints at one time became a fashion 
in homiletics. The Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine 
furnishes more illustrations of the habit than it would be 
worth while to count, often giving a double or triple 
interpretation of the same name. 

A tendency akin to that of transferring legends from 
one saint to another, out of which all the phenomena just 
mentioned have grown, is that of localizing them in 
convenient and satisfactory places quite without regard 
to whether the saints there lived and suffered. There is 
probably no more deeply rooted tradition in Christendom 
than that which connects Mary Magdalene, Martha, 
Lazarus, and their followers with the establishment of 
Christianity in southern France. For the past generation 
violent and destructive warfare has been waged against 
this cycle of legends by the best-equipped group of hagio- 
graphers on the Continent, yet it still retains its host of 
believers, not only among simple-hearted folk, to whom 
the struggles of the critical world could come only as 
distant echoes, but in more instructed circles also. 
Though the legends have been shown to be a tissue of 
falsehood, the work partly of interested and dishonest 
churchmen, partly of popular imagination, and though no 
record of the tradition is older than the eleventh century, 



40 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

it is still possible for writers to urge with ingenuous seri- 
ousness that Mary and her companions were the apostles 
of Provence. By disregarding certain points of chronol- 
ogy, they can forge a pretty chain of circumstantial 
evidence, based on the argument from possibility to 
probability, from probability to certainty, that makes 
the romance plausible enough. Above all, they place 
their reliance on such relics as the sarcophagus in the 
crypt of St. Maximin's near Aix, which is nothing else 
than a Gallo-Roman tomb of the fifth or sixth century. 
There is the ocular evidence, in reality both the source 
of error and its defender. 

What more natural, indeed, than the desire to connect 
great works of nature, or of a by-gone age, with heroes 
of the past? Both are humanized in the process. If a 
hero of the same locality be not at hand, there is no diffi- 
culty about transplanting one. Popular invention has no 
more to do with space than with time. Moreover, it deals 
thus largely not only with saints but with secular figures 
and invented characters of literature. Consider the an- 
cient sarcophagus which serves as the tomb of Romeo 
and Juliet at Verona, the burial-places of King Arthur in 
Great Britain, or, to compare great things with small, the 
"Old Curiosity Shop" of London and the perfectly in- 
credible number of houses in which Lafayette is reputed 
to have slept during a comparatively short sojourn in 
America. Is it, then, at all wonderful that St. Patrick 
should be connected with so many localities in Ireland; 
that the burial-place of St. Catharine of Alexandria 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 41 

should have been believed to be Mount Sinai; that Italy, 
France, and England should each have a St. Michael's 
Mount; or that Cologne should possess the relics of the 
Three Magi and of the Eleven Thousand Virgins? 

The questions as to the transference of legends from 
saint to saint and as to the localization of cult, which we 
have been discussing, lead quite naturally to a still more 
thorny subject — the relationship that subsists between 
pagan belief and the growth of popular Christian legend. 
Such contrary opinions are still held about the matter by 
the most enlightened and liberal scholars that it is very 
difficult to give the general reader an impartial view of 
the matter. Two principles must be borne in mind. 
First, we must remember that resemblance does not 
constitute identity; that because the characteristics of a 
particular saint or of a Christian rite have points of cor- 
respondence with pagan myth or observance it does not 
necessarily follow that the one developed from the other. 
In the second place, we may take it as an axiom that 
ritual always survives creed, cult doctrinal belief; hea- 
then usages remained influential after paganism as a 
religion was uprooted. 

With reference to the origin of the saints, it is neces- 
sary to recall that the cult of heroes was firmly established 
in Asia and Europe centuries before the advent of Chris- 
tianity. Among the races of India and the peoples of 
classical antiquity, as well as among our own remote 
ancestors, the line of demarcation between gods and 
heroes was never clearly fixed. The mortal traits of the 



42 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

dwellers on Olympus, and the confusion of the Germanic 
Beowulf with the god Beowa, sufficiently illustrate the 
fact. The equivocal position of this class of heroic beings, 
superhuman but yet of mortal genesis, undoubtedly corre- 
sponds to the position of saints in the Church. Centuries 
of belief stamped them on the minds of men, made them 
a necessary part of creation. Polytheism itself was but 
a delimitation, in one sense, of hero-worship. Now the 
earnest contention of conservative scholars like M. Del- 
ehaye, in combating the theory of such writers as Usener 
and Lucius that the cult of saints was an outgrowth of 
the cult of gods and heroes, is this: to postulate a sur- 
vival of pagan belief is unnecessary, because it was the 
martyrs, and the reverence in which their relics were held, 
that gave rise to the doctrine of the intercession of saints 
and to the development of ecclesiastical legend. Yet even 
M. Delehaye has to admit that the cult of heroes predis- 
posed men to accept the cult of saints. Indeed, the pres- 
ence of the one could not fail to influence the growth of 
the other. It is justifiable to conclude, therefore, that 
there was a causal connection between the two, even 
though the identification of particular saints with gods 
or heroes must not be accepted incautiously. 

With reference to this matter, it is important to re- 
member that the attitude of the Church towards the 
customs of converted races has generally been both liberal 
and wise. The missionaries of Catholicism, in all cen- 
turies, have tried, wherever possible, to adapt pagan rites 
to their religion instead of attempting to uproot theni 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 43 

wholesale. When met by wizardry, they adopted tactics 
which made them appear to the people as medicine-men 
of greater power. This probably accounts for the thau- 
maturgical element in the legends of great missionaries 
like St. Peter, St. Gregory of Tours, St. Columban, or 
St. Patrick. When they found feasts with harmless cere- 
monies, which were held on approximately the same 
dates as Christian festivals, they permitted their con- 
verts to have a free hand in the celebration of the holy 
days. Amalgamation of customs would inevitably take 
place. It is unjust and unscholarly to say that Christmas 
and Easter are nothing but heathen festivals transformed, 
simply because certain observances of them recall pagan 
celebrations of similar date. Once established, any Chris- 
tian feast would attract the pagan rites customary to 
that period of the year. Naive testimony to a partial 
recognition of this state of things on the part of a med- 
iaeval author is to be found in the legend of St. Mark, 
written by an anonymous Gloucestershire monk in the 
thirteenth century. What he says, put into modern Eng- 
lish, is this: — 

On his day men fast through all the land; for himself is it not, 
But for reverence of the banners that on that day are forth brought; 
For men bear them about each year, as the meaning thereof is, 
To pray for the harvest of the earth, that it may well come forth. 

This is nothing else than the blessing of the crops, the 
spring-time feast, joined to the celebration of St. Mark 
on the twenty-fifth of April. Even when they would, the 
priests were not always able to destroy old observances 



44 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

and beliefs, which accounts for many a dark page in the 
history of superstition as well as for many a pleasing 
survival of primitive custom. 

Though we cannot say that feasts on the same dates 
or that churches on the same sites are sufficient in every 
case to establish the identity of saints with gods or heroes, 
it is perfectly certain that many saints took over the 
attributes and legends which had been attached to such 
forbears. It is better not to say, as does Mr. Hartland 
in The Legend of Perseus, that "the church has converted 
and baptized the pagan hero Perseus" in the person of 
St. George; it is wiser to put it that the legend of the 
latter absorbed elements from the story of the heroic 
dragon-slayer. The resemblance is more than fortuitous; 
there is a real connection between the two. Similarly 
Danae and her tower of brass furnished material for the 
legend of St. Barbara; the myth of the Dioscuri, Castor 
and Pollux, was the progenitor of the legend of the good 
physicians, Cosmo and Damian; and the story of Epi- 
menides has essential likeness to the legend of the Seven 
Sleepers of Ephesus. The Discovery of the True Cross, 
in like manner, has as one of its prototypes Plutarch's 
account of the translation of Theseus. So the story of 
(Edipus became attached to three such well-known 
figures as Gregory the Great, Alban, and Julian the 
Hospitaller, as well as to less conspicuous saints. In all 
such cases, of course, the adaptation was the work of 
popular tradition, slow sometimes, but tenacious of 
memory. 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 45 

Whole groups of legends have sometimes been formed 
by this means. The example, at once most conspicuous 
and most debated, is attached to the various names of 
Pelagia, Marina, Margaret, Eugenia, Euphrosyne, Theo- 
dora, Apollinaria, Thais, Mary of Egypt, Papula, Eudo- 
cia, and Aira. The stories told of these persons, some of 
whom are undoubtedly real and some fictitious, are of 
two sorts. On the one hand, there are accounts of a 
prostitute who was converted and became an anchorite; 
on the other, a woman who clothed herself in men's gar- 
ments and lived either in the desert or in a monastery. 
Of some of the saints just mentioned both legends are 
related; of the majority, however, only one. Various 
modifications of the fundamental traits complicate the 
narratives in some instances but do not obscure the essen- 
tial attributes of the tales. That a woman really existed, 
about whose life grew up the legend of a virgin in a con- 
vent of men, appears to be assured by a recent study of 
M. Clugnet, who makes her a Syrian of the fifth cen- 
tury. Concerning the adaptation of pagan material in 
these stories, individually, there can be no difference of 
opinion. Furthermore, the legends of the group of saints 
as a whole have an evident relationship to one another, 
shown frequently by similarity of name, and always by 
likeness of content. What is still a question for debate is 
the theory, first advanced a generation ago by Usener, 
that all these saints are merely reincarnations of Aphro- 
dite or Venus, as worshipped in Asia Minor. 

To enter upon a long discussion of the case would be 



46 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

impossible. I can only draw the reader's attention to a 
couple of principles involved by the debate and give my 
own conclusions. In the first place, the advocates of 
Usener's theory have certainly not been careful to dis- 
tinguish with sufficient clearness between the saints 
themselves and their legends. Even though it should be 
shown that all the materials of the latter were drawn 
from pagan sources, it would still be unnecessary to say 
that the Christian Church has for centuries been worship- 
ping Venus, purified and disguised. The faithful have 
held in reverence certain women with purely fictitious 
histories, many attributes of whose lives may have been 
suggested by the knowledge, on the part of Levantine 
Christians, of rites and ideals which they abhorred. In 
the second place, the opponents of the identification of 
the group with Aphrodite, even M. Delehaye, are prone 
to forget the survival of cult and of popular tradition, 
which, even when they have lost their primitive signifi- 
cance, are capable of stirring the imagination. The leg- 
ends of Pelagia and her compeers, to my mind, represent 
the profound change of ideals wrought by Christianity 
on the oriental mind. The stories could hardly have 
taken the form they did — and the form, though perhaps 
morbid, has elements of beauty — unless there had ex- 
isted a substratum of remembrance of pagan belief. To 
that extent, and to that extent only, Pelagia and Aphro- 
dite are one. 

By all odds the most romantic case of pagan survival in 
Christian legend is that of Barlaam and Josaphat, who 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 47 

are celebrated in the Roman martyrology on November 
27. According to the Christian legend, Barlaam was a 
Persian ascetic, who went into India and converted Josa- 
phat, the son of a king, whom he instructed by precept 
and example in the ways of Christian living. The work 
is ascribed to John of Damascus, who flourished in the 
eighth century, but it is really earlier and of unknown 
authorship. Back of this ecclesiastical form, which em- 
bodies the apologia of the Greek philosopher Aristides, 
as was first shown by Professor Kuhn in 1893, existed an 
oriental romance of wide currency and great age, which 
was written to inculcate the teachings of Buddhism. 
Barlaam, in point of fact, is none other than Buddha 
himself. Probably the book was introduced to Christian 
readers by its first translator purely as a romance of edi- 
fying tendency. So widely did it become known, how- 
ever, and so seriously was it taken, that the two main 
figures were, after the passage of time, considered his- 
torical and received into the company of Christian saints. 
Scarcely less romantic is the story of the development 
of the various legends that have to do with miraculous 
portraits, images, and shrouds of Christ. Perhaps the 
form of the belief best known to the reader may be the 
legend of Veronica, which relates how the napkin with 
which Christ wiped His face on the way to the cross re- 
ceived the impress of His features, was preserved by the 
woman who proffered it, and was later carried to Rome. 
Of this legend, or of the picture, nothing was known in 
Rome, as a matter of fact, until the beginning of the 



48 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

twelfth century; but from the reign of Justinian (527-565) 
/mwards there had been in circulation stories about 
images of Christ, of wonderful origin. Similar stories 
about images* of the gods were known to the world of 
antiquity, going back ultimately to the worship of me- 
teoric fetiches. Among the Greeks such fetiches early 
came to express the close relationship between the person 
- and the figure of the divinity concerned. Belief in the ex- 
istence and protecting attributes of heaven-sent images 
was, indeed, common to many places and periods before 
the Christian era. Back of such stories as those of the 
statue of Pallas Athena and of the Trojan Palladium 
there was the same essential notion that is inherent in 
the Christian traditions mentioned above. Popular be- 
lief seems to have clung to this idea and to have given it 
a Christian coloring. In its newer form there was fre- 
quently present the notion of actual contact between the 
image and the person of Jesus during His lifetime; but 
the versions differed widely from one another in their 
content. These Christian legends were apparently for- 
mulated, first of all, in Asia Minor. There the story of 
a mysterious picture was connected with the legend of 
King Abgar, who sent to Christ for healing and received 
a letter promising aid by means of a disciple. In like 
manner the legend of a portrait later united in the Occi- 
dent with the legend of Pilate to give rise to the fabulous 
history of Veronica. 

We have seen above how an oriental romance became, 
without much alteration, a Christian legend. Though the 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 49 

matter has not yet been fully worked out, there can be 
no question that the influence of romances, chiefly those 
of Byzantium and of western Europe, on legend-making 
has been considerable. The difficulty lies in deciding 
whether a particular legend has really been influenced 
by a romance which it resembles, or whether the two , 
have merely drawn upon the same non-literary source, 
some floating traditional tale. For example, the legends " 
of St. Alexis and St. Eustace bear a marked likeness in ' 
manner and material to the late Greek romances, save 
that, like all of their kind, they have a sad instead of a 
happy ending. Alexis is a young man of noble birth, who 
deserts his wife on their bridal night, lives as a beggar in 
foreign parts till his sanctity is discovered to the people 
by miraculous means, returns home, and dwells as a de- 
pendent in his father's house until his death, when his 
identity is revealed through a miracle. It is supposed 
that a Byzantine original for this legend once existed, 
but that cannot yet be proved. The story of St. Eustace, 
the Roman general, who devoted himself to the faith in 
consequence of a vision, was tried by the loss of property 
and family, lived by the work of his hands, and was re- 
stored to family and position only to suffer martyrdom, 
has a similar resemblance to the later Greek narratives; 
but it really came from the Far East and was rather the 
parent than the offspring of romance. Yet both legends 
took form under the same conditions that fostered By- 
zantine romances and throve so exceedingly that they 
helped to preserve the type of narrative long after the 



50 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

more purely literary product was dead. By the eighth 
century the knowledge of many such stories had pene- 
trated the farthest regions of the western civilization, as 
is witnessed by the works of the Englishmen Ealdhelm 
and Bede. Indeed, the tendency of legends to follow 
such models had probably spent itself a couple of cen- 
turies before that time. Thenceforward, the legends 
thus created were pilfered by popular fancy or well- 
meaning writers to furnish forth newer legends; and the 
: legendary commonplace, as I have said before, became 
rife. Though many pious tales were unquestionably 
brought back to the West by crusaders, the communi- 
cation between the empires of Rome and Byzantium, 
between occidental pilgrims and the Holy Land, had 
long before been sufficient to account for England's 
knowledge of oriental saints. Western Europe shared, 
besides, the common heritage of wonders in the Old 
Testament, canonical and apocryphal. These miracles 
became everywhere the models for legendary imaginings. 
The people of those parts, however, made an original 
contribution to the legendary type through their tales of 
epic valor and knightly love. Only in such circumstances 
could have arisen the later legend of Christopher, the 
rude giant who sought Christ because he heard of Him as 
stronger than the devil and served Him as a ferryman 
according to his ability. So we find Vivien, nephew of 
Guillaume d'Orange and himself celebrated in four chan- 
sons de geste, becoming a local French martyr under the 
style of Vidien . The heroes of the romance that best em- 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 51 

bodied mediaeval ideals of friendship, Amis and Amiloun, 
were transferred without change of name or story to the 
calendar of saints. Much that is noble in the legends of 
the Virgin proceeds from the notions of chivalry which 
prevailed in the world during the era of their formation. 
In connection with the localization of legends, I have 
spoken above of the tendency to weave popular stories 
about monuments of nature or of a by-gone age; and, in 
noting the confusion of martyrologies, I have referred to 
saints who have come into being by a mistaken reading 
of manuscripts. A source of legend akin to these is found 
in pictures and inscriptions. The synaxaria of the Greek 
church give detailed descriptions of the appearance of 
certain saints that seem to reveal the knowledge of a 
contemporary, but are in reality founded on Byzantine 
manuals of painting, like the portraits of Trojan and 
Greek heroes in the spurious histories of Dares and 
Dictys. Similarly, it is clear that the whole company of 
martyrs, of whom legend relates that they carried their 
heads after death, the cephalophores, arose from a widely 
known form of iconography. The pictures of Orpheus 
charming the beasts doubtless suggested the passage in 
the passion of Eleutherius, that represents him as sitting 
on an elevated place and preaching to the animals which 
surround him. Later, the idyllic story was passed on to 
other saints, as when Bede in his old age and blindness 
addressed the birds on a moor. By some occult psycho- 
logical transformation the same tale may have suggested 
to Francis of Assisi certain of his most characteristic atti- 



52 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

tudes and actions. Sometimes a writer even gave credit 
to the pictorial source of his words, as when the author 
of the panegyric on St. Theodore, attributed to Gregory of 
Nyssa, called the attention of his hearers to the paintings 
in the basilica. Illustrations of the rise of legends from 
inscriptions are perhaps unnecessary, since they involve 
the same kind of error as those proceeding from the mis- 
taken reading of manuscripts. I might cite in passing the 
romantic journey of St. Abercius to cure the princess 
possessed by a demon, which the researches of the Abbe 
Duchesne have shown to repose on a misunderstood 
epitaph. 

Reference has been made to the transference of legends 
from one saint to another. In its most pronounced form 
this process was carried so far by hagiographers as to 
make an entire legend out of extracts from other lives, 
sometimes out of literal borrowings. Such mosaics, of 
course, come close to out-and-out forgeries, though it is 
not necessary to suppose that in the majority of cases 
the authors had any culpable intent. Plagiarism must be 
judged according to the literary ethics of each offender's 
own day. Furthermore, even where writers copied liter- 
ally, they may have done so because they found an earlier 
life that corresponded in all essentials to the traditional 
account which they were to put into writing. Yet it is 
pitifully true that cases of intentional fraud stain the 
pages of the legendaries. For authors like the monk of 
Malmesbury, who inserted into the abbey's chronicle the 
account of Joseph of Arimathea's fabulous apostolate in 



ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 53 

Britain, we need feel no tenderness of heart, though his 
story has enriched the literature of both England and 
the Continent. 

The tendencies of growth, and the species of product, 
which we have been considering, were of different periods 
and, some of them, of transitory character. As a literary 
type, however, the legend reached its fullest development 
in the thirteenth century. In that splendid age, when the 
flesh and the spirit of men were so thoroughly imbued 
with life that neither the widening horizon of knowledge, 
nor the absorption with war and wealth, nor the enthu- 
siasm for art, could withhold them from mortal combat, 
both the vocation for saintliness and the cult of sainthood 
found their completest expression. St. Dominic and St. 
Francis of Assisi represented the clashing interests of the 
century, but each possessed the same enthusiasm for the 
kingdom of heaven that other men brought to the service 
of the kingdoms of this world. In the history of English 
legend- writing, as in the history of the type at large, we 
shall see that this is the focal point. Never, before or 
since, has the miracle been so much in vogue, never has 1 
the impossible seemed so possible. It was fanaticism, 
imagination and enthusiasm unrestrained by reason, if 
you please, that fostered the growth of Mary legends and 
the mysticism so characteristic of the age; but the fanati- 
cism was noble in origin and expressive of gloriously rich 
human vitality. 

Prosy and matter-of-fact though it frequently is, the 
great encyclopaedia by Jacobus de Voragine nevertheless 



54 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

deserved the name that men bestowed on it — Legenda 
Aurea. The Golden Legend was representative of the 
thirteenth century in the same way that the Ecclesiastical 
History by Eusebius was characteristic of the fourth, and 
the Glory of the Martyrs by Gregory of Tours of the sixth. 
These three great collections mark well-defined stages in 
the history of the legend, and each is worthy of praise 
according to its kind. Some may prefer the narratives of 
one, some of another, but all who desire knowledge as to 
what part saints have played in the world must be con- 
versant with the three. 



CHAPTER III 

THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 




HE early history of Christianity in England 
is involved in the obscurity that rests upon 
the latter part of the Roman occupation. At 
just what date and by just what means the 
conquering religion penetrated this outpost of the Empire 
can never be satisfactorily determined. Legend early 
busied itself to supply this lack of information, and with 
its wonted success. The English Church, like the Galil- 
ean, was made the fruit of apostolic labors; it was estab- 
lished by Joseph of Arimathea; it was founded in the 
second century by Pope Eleutherius in response to a let- 
ter from the British king, Lucius; or it was the result of 
the Blessed Bran's journey to Rome. Fables all, as we 
now know. Yet these legends, rest though they may on 
wanton forgery or false assumption, contain a slight re- 
siduum of truth in that they represent the evangeliza- 
tion of Britain as taking place comparatively early. 
From the evidence of Tertullian at about the beginning 
of the third century and of Origen towards fifty years 
later, though both speak vaguely, it would seem that the 
missions of the Church on the island had by their time 
made some progress. The legend of St. Alban, the proto- 
martyr who suffered, according to Gildas and Bede, under 
the Diocletian persecution, is certainly apocryphal: Pro- 



56 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

fessor W. Meyer has shown that the earlier form of the 
Passion, which was written in the first half of the sixth 
century, placed the martyrdom in the time of Severus. 
Yet we know that St. Alban, as distinguished from his 
legend, was venerated in the early part of the fifth cen- 
tury. We know, too, of the presence of British bishops 
at the Council of Aries in 314 and at the Council of 
Rimini in 359. Indeed, during the fourth and fifth cen- 
turies the Church was firmly established, even though it 
may never have won during the Roman occupation the 
complete adherence of both the governing and the gov- 
erned races. It was visited by a great prelate like St. 
German, and it produced in St. Patrick one of the great 
missionaries of all time. We should remember that the 
first Christian emperor, Constantine, though he neither 
established his title nor accepted the faith till some six 
years afterwards, was initially proclaimed (306) at York 
— a striking indication of how intimately Britain was 
concerned with movements in the Empire at large. 

As far as southern Britain was concerned, all this work 
was by degrees undone after the emperor Honorius aban- 
doned the province in 410. The inroads of the Picts and 
Scots on the one hand, and of the Germanic invaders on 
the other, gradually overwhelmed the Church in the 
rising tide of barbarism. Although it is clear that the 
Celts held to their faith when driven westward or across 
the Channel to Armorica, it is equally evident that they 
had neither the energy nor the organization necessary to 
carry on missionary enterprises among the victorious 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 57 

English. In the latter half of the sixth century, St. 
Columba carried Christianity to the Picts of the North 
and founded the great monastery of Iona; and there was 
constant intercourse between the insular and continental 
churches, which indicates a healthy zeal on the part of 
Celtic Christendom. But until the coming of St. Augus- 
tine, in 597 (the year of Columba's death), the English 
were left to paganism. 

The seventh century became, then, the great missionary 
era. Augustine and his successors early carried their work 
beyond the boundaries of Kent, and in a few decades 
laid the foundations of what was to become the dominant 
branch of the Church of England. Though the work of 
Paulinus, one of the boldest of the Roman party, who 
went to York in 625, was overthrown by the death of 
Edwin, the equally courageous Aidan, a monk from 
Columba's monastery, renewed the mission with perma- 
nent success ten years later. In that same year, Birinus, 
who had been sent out by Pope Honorius, baptized Cy- 
negils, King of Wessex. Despite the quarrels between the 
Roman and Celtic churches concerning matters of observ- 
ance, the progress of the faith in all parts of the island was 
thenceforward rapid. How solid were its foundations is 
indicated by the establishment of monasteries which 
were to be for centuries grand focal points of Christianity. 
Hilde founded Whitby in 657, Etheldred began her con- 
vent at Ely in 673, the Saxons re-established Glastonbury 
in 680, and in 681 Benedict Biscop sent Ceolfrid from 
Wearmouth to head the new monastery of Jarrow. 



58 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

The conversion of England thus fell upon a time when 
the legend as a literary type was fully developed in older 
parts of the Christian world. Most of the tendencies 
discussed in the previous chapter were operative, and 
nearly all the influences exerted by or upon saints' lives 
were already present, though they had not yet reached 
a climax. As far as foreign saints were concerned, the 
new Church, it would seem, had only to borrow narra- 
tives from its neighbors. These it could translate into one 
or another dialect of the vernacular, when a need of popu- 
lar presentation might arise; and its store of pious nar- 
rative would be complete. For writing the lives of native 
saints it had models enough and to spare. They could be 
made in the same fashion as those of their foreign peers. 

With such a simple programme possible, it is not a 
little remarkable that the first lives of saints to be com- 
posed in English should have taken a form unique in its 
conception and vigorously original in its execution. Al- 
though Ealdhelm and Bede, the two great English hagi- 
ographers of the late seventh and the early eighth cen- 
turies, who wrote in Latin, followed continental models 
with marked distinction and success both in verse and 
prose, the purely native product has characteristics that 
give it a place apart and a history of its own. Instead of 
copying foreign types, it ran into the mould prepared for 
the native epic. This form, the reader will remember, 
came to its highest point of development about the year 
700; and Beowulf, the only heroic poem preserved to us 
in its entirety, can be dated with some assurance as a 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 59 

work of the beginning of the eighth century. That the 
poetic impulse which produced the somewhat sombre and 
narrow, but very noble and ardent, native epic was in 
full force at the time of the missionaries' arrival is shown 
by the simultaneous production of two types of heroic 
narrative, the non-Christian and the Christian. 

The literary movements of which I am speaking took 
place in the North. Whether any similar development 
occurred among the Saxons of the South, we cannot know 
with certainty. William of Malmesbury, in the thir- 
teenth century, tells how St. Ealdhelm, who died in 709, 
was accustomed to gather his people about him after 
mass and by his art in minstrelsy make them listen to 
stories drawn from sacred history. He cites a work by 
King iElfred as his authority for this charming tale. 
Unfortunately the book is lost; and we have only William's 
testimony that English poems by the West Saxon abbot 
and bishop were known to the great king, and that he 
regarded them as superior to all other poems in the ver- 
nacular. What they were like, and whether they repre- 
sented a body of epic verse like that of the North, it is 
impossible to discover. 

We do know, however, that the extant poems were 
composed in Anglia and, during the ^Elfredian awaken- 
ing, done over into the southern dialect. In Northumbria 
Paulinus, Aidan, and their followers met with a school of 
poetry (it would, perhaps, be better to say a diffused 
power of poetic utterance) which was soon turned to the 
service of the Church. From the story of Csedmon, told 



60 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

with exquisite refinement of sympathy by Bede in his 
Ecclesiastical History, we gain our only sure knowledge 
of how this came to pass. Though somewhat adorned with 
legendary trappings, the tale makes it clear that during 
the rule of its foundress, St. Hilde, there lived at Whitby 
a simple-minded and unlearned monk, who composed 
various poetic paraphrases of biblical themes. Further- 
more, there is little reason to doubt Bede's statement that 
this man entered the monastery somewhat late in life 
and never learned to read, but made his poems from what 
he could learn orally about the content of the Scriptures 
and the doctrine of salvation. Now, since Hilde died in 
680, we have this curious phenomenon, too little remarked 
by students of our oldest literature: certain poems of 
Christian content and tendency were written at about 
the same time that the greatest example of the Germanic 
epic known to us came into final form — perhaps even 
somewhat earlier. The Christian references in Beowulf, 
which have baffled all attempts at disentanglement from 
the poem as a whole, serve to confirm this view. They 
are there because the author, though he told a story of 
pagan times, was himself a Christian. 

The fact appears to be that the missionaries, on enter- 
ing Mercia and Northumbria, found heroic poetry on the 
rising tide of development. They do not seem by their 
advent to have checked the flow; and, indeed, they may 
even, by bringing in the culture of an older civilization, 
have caused a somewhat inchoate mass of popular tradi- 
tional lays to crystallize in the form of epics. Be that as 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 61 

it may, the Anglian poets were at first so little influenced 
by their change of faith, which was in the beginning 
national rather than individual, that, when they sang of 
their old heroes, they did so with all the fervor of unbroken 
tradition. They recognized God as the ruler of the world; 
but they could not escape the thought of Wyrd, mys- 
terious and immutable, who in utter darkness beyond the 
reach of any prayer wove the destinies of men. Those of 
the poets who, like Csedmon, chose to celebrate the deeds 
of the Christian heroes inevitably treated them in the 
manner to which they were accustomed. We have lost 
a priceless boon in the disappearance of Csedmon's own 
works, save for nine lines preserved by Bede; but we can 
see from the biblical paraphrases of the late seventh or 
early eighth century, such as Exodus, that the change 
from pagan to Christian themes meant to the poets a 
difference of subject only, not of spirit. To them the 
proper end of narrative poetry was to display the prowess 
of some hero, divine or mortal, in contest, achievement, 
and defeat. They idealized courage, boldness, force of 
will, and self-restraint. They loved the flash of weapons, 
the rude pleasures of the feast, the tension of effort in any 
form; but they loved not less the thought of cloud-hung 
seas and battle-fields strewn with corpses. 

In a spirit like this the Anglian poets came to write 
the earliest lives of saints that English literature pos- 
sesses. These poetical legends are few in number and un- 
equal in merit, but they are alike in selection of material 
as well as in manner of utterance. They are, indeed, 



62 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

episodes from the lives of saints, broadly sketched and 
yet highly adorned, rather than complete legends. They 
are unified by the singleness of aim that animated their 
authors: the desire to present a stirring picture of the 
triumphs of some great soul in contest with the forces of 
sin. If they can stimulate the imagination to grasp the 
meaning of the hero's life and can awaken a passion for 
the warfare of the spirit instead of the sword, they have 
accomplished their end. For the details of a saint's earthly 
life they care little, preferring to expand the bare outline 
with heightened description, with stern admonition, and 
with lyrical appeal. Thus they focus attention on the 
great moments of the saint's history, which they weld by 
fervor of thought and speech into poetic unity. 

The making of these epic legends centres in the 
name of the poet Cynewulf. Although he is really little 
more than a name to us, as far as any knowledge of his 
life is concerned, the fact that he is the only poet of the 
period whose personality is even so far revealed gives him 
a peculiar place. By contrast with the anonymity of 
other writers, he seems very close to us and makes us feel 
that we know more about him than is actually the case. 
Probably this is the reason why modern scholarship has 
woven a little biographical legend about his name: a 
fabric of conjecture and ill-based inference. The truth of 
the matter is that we know him only as an Anglian 
author who signed four poems by curious acrostics in 
runic characters, which he worked into the body of the 
verse. Twice he spelled his name Cynwulf, and twice 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 63 

Cynewulf, the latter being the form now universally 
adopted to describe him. In the eighth century he could 
use either style with perfect propriety, and he may well 
have been as indifferent to the particular form as was 
Shakespeare. Probably we shall never be able to identify 
him quite certainly with any person about whom we have 
knowledge in other ways. Of the various men suggested 
in this connection, however, a Cynewulf who was Bishop 
of Lindisfarne from 740 to 780 and who died in 783 is 
most likely to have been the poet. The period of his life, 
his place of residence, and the record of his career, as far 
as our meagre information goes, are not inconsistent with 
the theory. 

Of Cynewulf, the poet, nothing is known, however, 
beyond what can be gleaned from his signed poems. 
That he was an Anglian and in all probability a North- 
umbrian, the form of his speech gives assurance. He 
wrote in the second half of the eighth century, as we 
know by the same means. He was learned, for he showed 
an expert's knowledge of theological dogma and such a 
familiarity with books as must have been unusual in 
his day. By the same token he is likely to have been 
an ecclesiastic, whether monk, secular priest, or simple 
clerk. The use that he made of his Latin sources might 
indicate that he was a member of some conventual estab- 
lishment, where a considerable library would be at his 
command; but, as a bishop or other dignitary, he would 
doubtless have had equally ready access to works of 
piety and erudition. Taking into account the subjective 



64, SAINTS' LEGENDS 

character of his poetic style — that in the Christ at least 
he dealt with high themes in a richly individual manner — 
it is somewhat remarkable that he told us so little about 
himself. Had he been indifferent to literary reputation, he 
would never have signed his poems as he did. He certainly 
did not seek anonymity, for he said, in introducing one of 
the runic passages: * — 

He may find in this place, the fine of perception. 
The man delighting in the music of songs, 
Who made this poem. 

Yet his subjectivity does not imply much self -revela- 
tion. The only passage in which anything like autobi- 
ographical statement is introduced just precedes his sig- 
nature in Elene. There he states expressly that he was an 
old man when he wrote the poem, and he hints at some 
spiritual experience that made it possible for him to un- 
derstand and to describe the miracle of the cross. The 
lines following, in which the runes are imbedded, have 
been taken to imply that in young manhood he was the 
retainer of some lord and knew the transitory pleasures 
of the world from actual experience; but it has been 
shown recently by Professor C. F. Brown that these lines 
refer rather to the life of man before the revelation of 
Christ and contain no allusions to the poet's own career. 
Thus we are left without knowledge as to the outward 
events of his life, and have to be content with the inti- 
mations of character afforded by his poems. 
1 The Fates of the Apostles, vv. 96 jf. 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 65 

Of the four poems that Cynewulf signed, three only 
fall within the scope of this book, for the Christ, 1 his 
masterpiece, is a rhapsodical epic rather than an epic 
legend. Juliana, Elene, and The Fates of the Apostles, 
though of varying literary excellence, fairly represent not 
only his genius but the English legendary type at this 
period. Of the order in which they were composed we 
know nothing, save that the poet regarded himself as 
old at the time when he wrote the epilogue of Elene. 
On grounds of poetic merit, however, Juliana is generally 
regarded as earlier in date than Cynewulf 's other works. 
Certainly it is cruder and less successful as a narrative 
poem than Elene, and may with propriety be first con- 
sidered in a discussion of the legendary type which it 
represents. 

The great importance of Juliana resides, as a matter of 
fact, in the extent of its departure from the method and 
manner of Latin legends. Although the particular form 
of the Acta S. Juliana from which Cynewulf drew his 
material has unfortunately not yet been discovered, it is 
clear that he must have treated rather boldly whatever 
source he may have used. The story of St. Juliana does 
not differ very much in kind or in content from the leg- 
ends of many other virgins who suffered torments and 
death for the faith. 

1 I refer to Christ as a single poem advisedly, though doubts have 
been raised as to whether Cynewulf wrote more than the second of 
the three parts into which it is divided. His signature is found at the 
end of Part n. 



66 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Though she wished to live a maiden, Juliana was be- 
trothed to Eleusius, whom she refused to marry until he 
should obtain the office of prefect, later adding the con- 
dition that he become a Christian. After announcing her 
resolution to her father, she was delivered over to her 
lover, who tried by blandishments, tortures, and im- 
prisonment to shake her determination. .In prison she 
seized a devil, who had come to tempt her, and com- 
pelled him to disclose the secrets of his master Beelzebub, 
till he begged for mercy. When she was again brought 
from prison to the place of judgment, she dragged the 
demon with her and humiliated him before the people. 
Again she was tortured — torn on a wheel, placed on a 
flaming pyre, and cast into a boiling cauldron; but by 
her prayers she escaped all these torments without harm. 
The devil reappeared, but took flight when she gazed at 
him. With prayers and admonitions she then submitted 
to the sword, while her lover and judge was left to ulti- 
mate destruction by shipwreck. 

Destitute of historical verisimilitude and the interest 
of romantic adventure, this Latin story is characteristic 
of the baser development of legends. There was oppor- 
tunity for psychological characterization, but the op- 
portunity was neglected. In weak imitation of the genu- 
ine passions, though it is clearly a mosaic of other lives, 
this is a dry, hard record of events, a tale of distorted 
ideals and extravagant punishments. The only graces of 
which it can boast are the logic of events, the underlying 
spirit of self-immolation which from one point of view 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 67 

makes all martyrdoms beautiful, and the brave accept- 
ance of struggle, which is responsible for the single touch 
of imagination in the whole — the saint's combat with 
the fiend. Even these good qualities are not so well de- 
veloped as to raise the legend out of mediocrity. With 
such poor material did Cynewulf choose to work, and 
quite probably he had no suspicion that the story was 
ill fitted to be the subject of great poetry. 

The instinct of the true creative artist, however, led 
him to seize upon the elements that were capable of stim- 
ulating the imagination. These he elaborated at the ex- 
pense of straightforward narrative, elevated and magni- 
fied them, and transformed a rather commonplace tale 
into a brief and crude, but vigorous, epic legend. To 
this end he expanded the opening scenes, devoting nearly 
a third of his poem to the record of Juliana's efforts to 
avoid marriage with Eleusius, and to her colloquies both 
with him and with her father. The saint's contest with 
the devil in prison, which was precisely the one episode 
suitable for such treatment, he enlarged still more. From 
being somewhat less than a third of the Latin source, as 
is evident from a comparison of the extant versions, it 
was made to occupy nearly one half of Cynewulf's nar- 
rative. Nor was it merely expanded in bulk: it became 
the central feature of the poem in interest as well as 
extent. As the saint compelled the fiend to reveal the 
secrets of his world-old contest with men, as he dilated 
on his terror of returning empty-handed to the "king of 
the dwellers in Hell" and yet begged to be set free from 



68 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the bonds under which her virginal purity placed him, 
the struggle grew in dignity because it was made typical 
of the age-long combat with sin. Juliana, from being a 
rather conventional figure, became a heroine of epic 
dimensions, rejoicing like some barbarian goddess in the 
discomfiture of her foe; strong to do battle and triumphant 
in victory. 

In thus changing the emphasis of the story, Cynewulf 
gave it real dignity and power. The tortures that preceded 
the saint's death he recounted briefly; to her farewell he 
gave full space, as befitted the end of an epic heroine; and 
in the simple epilogue, into which he wove his name, 
he voiced his longing for her help on that day when his 
soul should take its mysterious journey to the court of 
the Lord of the Heavens. From start to finish he so 
moulded his unpromising materials as to give them vigor 
and life. A dull poem this has been called by the his- 
torians of our oldest literature, and even the latest editor 
of it seems afraid of expressing his admiration. He com- 
plains that the struggle with the devil is not presented 
with the vivid homeliness of the same scene in the Old 
French Vie de sainte Juliane or of the similar contest in 
Bunyan's Pilgrim 's Progress. This is to misunderstand 
the meaning of the poem as completely as did the usually 
clear-sighted Ten Brink when he objected that Cynewulf 
made no effort to place "all the essential moments of the 
action in clear relationship " to one another. These things 
the poet did not do, certainly, and for the sufficient reason 
that he was writing neither a spiritualized fabliau nor a 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 69 

straightforward tale. He was attempting to compose, not 
entirely without success, an epic legend. Read in the 
light of its real purpose, Juliana will seem to no critic, I 
believe, tedious or ineffectual. To ask of it anything but 
what we know as epic qualities is like seeking romantic 
emotion in the Essay on Man or metaphysics in The 
Eve of St Agnes. 

Faults the poem does have, even when judged accord- 
ing to its kind. There is a stiffness of phrase that be- 
tokens mechanical effort, a fumbling uncertainty of touch 
now and again that seems to reveal a poet not yet com- 
pletely the master of his medium. On account of such 
weaknesses of style and of the evident inferiority of its 
material, Juliana must take a lower place than Elene; 
but it should be regarded as no mean achievement in 
heroic verse. Not only does Cynewulf boldly change the 
original story, wherever a better poetic effect is obtained 
by so doing, and give life and color to a conventional piece 
of portraiture, but, without sacrifice of dignity, he infuses 
human interest into the characters and lights up his nar- 
rative by references to local conditions. So the saint's 
father and lover lean their spears together when they 
meet for a conference; the devil tells how he stirs up 
gusty quarrels among men while they drink in the wine- 
hall; and Juliana is led for execution to a place outside 
the town "near the land's border." Nicodemia, in short, 
is represented as if it were a Northumbrian settlement, 
inhabited by Teutonic heroes in whom Christianity had 
not stifled racial custom and instinct. The epithets for 



70 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

men and things, which are the characteristic trappings 
of Old English poetry of whatever sort, gleam from the 
rugged verse as they do in Beowulf. Though occasionally 
inept, they more often give the story a power and a ten- 
derness that the Latin does not even suggest. What could 
be happier than the choice of the adjective "sun-bright" 
to distinguish the heroic woman who, to the poet's imagi- 
nation, represented the triumph of good over the darkness 
of the world? Moreover, in the fiend's story of his wicked 
deeds, which he could not fully recount in the space of 
"a summer-long day," there is a lurking humor that 
lightens the severity of the tale without plunging it into 
buffoonery. 

The undoubted superiority of the other complete leg- 
end which is certainly by Cynewulf , the Elene, rests 
fully as much on choice of subject as on treatment. The 
story of St. Helena's discovery of the true cross, which 
took form before the end of the fourth century, appeals 
to the romantic imagination as few martyrdoms have the 
power to do. Not only is there in it the stir of battles and 
of adventurous journeyings, but there is emphasized that 
mysterious power which brought East and West together 
in a common worship. As Constantine the Great came 
to be the symbol of a Roman Empire purified by Chris- 
tianity, and so remained to the end of the Middle Ages, 
his connection with a symbol greater than himself could 
not fail to stir the religious feeling of all true believers. 
To Cynewulf, a poet on the boundaries of God's empire, 
the touch of mysticism and the full-blooded romance in 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 71 

the story were probably alike attractive. The material 
was well suited to his ends. 

As is the case with Juliana, we do not know the precise 
form in which Cynewulf found the legend. A recent com- 
parison of his text with some twenty other versions, made 
by Professor Holthausen, showed that the Latin source 
must have been more elaborate than any copy now ex- 
tant; and the investigations of Professor C. F. Brown, 
still more lately, have made it probable that the poet had 
before him a Latin text written in Ireland or by an Irish 
scribe. When the close relationship between the North- 
umbrian and Irish churches is remembered, this need 
occasion no surprise; nor does it lessen the poetic achieve- 
ment of Cynewulf to show that he worked with a version 
somewhat less bald than the summary account of the 
Acta Sanctorum. It was not necessary in the case of this 
legend to alter the fabric or to change the emphasis in 
order to glorify and elevate the story. 

The Emperor Constantine, while confronting the bar- 
barians on the Danube with his army, had a vision of the 
cross shining in the sky, inscribed with the words : " In hoc 
signo vinces." Thereupon he had made a likeness of the 
cross, which was carried into battle before him. After he 
had defeated the barbarians and had returned to Rome, 
he learned the meaning of the cross and was baptized. 
When he found that Christ had suffered in Jerusalem, 
he sent his mother Helena thither to seek the wood of the 
cross. With a great company the lady journeyed to the 
Holy Land, called together the leaders of the Jews, and 



72 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

bade them select men of the law to answer her questions. 
To the thousand wise doctors who came to her she re- 
hearsed the prophecies concerning the Messiah, and com- 
manded that they choose the most learned of their num- 
ber to answer her. The five hundred then brought before 
her she dismissed bewildered, taunting them with their 
ignorance and folly. While they were taking counsel as 
to the meaning of her words, Judas told them that she 
was seeking the wood on which their fathers had sus- 
pended Christ. From his father Simon, and ultimately 
from his grandfather Zaccheus, the story of the crucifixion 
and subsequent events had come to him. After telling 
the story, he was brought into the Queen's presence and 
questioned by her privately. He was unable to tell her 
precisely the position of Calvary and was imprisoned for 
seven days, when he promised to discover the place. By 
means of prayer he miraculously found this and dug up 
three crosses, which he took to Helena. When she had 
made sure, by its healing properties, that one of these was 
the true cross, the Empress adorned it richly, built for it 
a church on Calvary, and had Judas made bishop under 
the name Cyriacus. She then sought the nails of the 
cross, which were revealed at the bishop's prayer, shining 
in the earth. These she sent to Constantine, to deck the 
bridle of his horse, while she herself lingered in Jerusalem 
to establish a day in commemoration of the discovery of 
the cross. 

This tale, which he found an. inspiration and a glory, 
Cynewulf treated with the mixture of objective realism 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 73 

and subjective sympathy that marked his poetic style at 
its best. Though he had no need of making extensive 
changes in order to give the story epic value, he does not 
seem to have been hampered by too close adherence to 
the Latin source. He caught the inspiration of the nar- 
rative and transfused it according to his own fashion, 
obviously keeping the order and even the words of his 
original wherever they were fitting, and freely expanding 
passages that demanded greater breadth. Thus in the 
description at the beginning of the poem he pictures 
with manifest delight the gathering of the Huns and 
the Goths, the Franks and the Hugs, against the Roman 
power. 

Bold men were they, eager for battle, 
Prepared for the contest; their woven coats 
And spears were shining; with shouts and the crashing 
Of shields they uplifted the standard of battle. 
When the heroes together had gathered by kinsfolk, 
Forth fared the host. In the forest the wolf 
Howled his war-cry and hid not the omen; 
The eagle, wet-winged, on the enemy's track 
Lifted his shout. Straightway there hastened 
From camp unto camp the greatest of armies, 
Hosts to the battle. 

Through the entire passage, descriptive of the battle and 
of Constantine's vision, there runs a strain of martial 
vigor for which the poet himself was clearly responsible. 
Illustrative of the same tendency to dwell with epic 
concreteness on passages that permitted such treatment 
is the voyage of Helena to Palestine. Probably the sug- 



74 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

gestion for a description of the journey was furnished by 
Cynewulf 's immediate source, though none of the extant 
Latin versions mentions it; but the realization of it could 
have proceeded from no one less gifted with the power of 
seeing and feeling than was the Northumbrian poet. 

Then over the ocean they drove, the ships high-built, 

And the prows were foamy; they felt the shock, 

The beat on the hull of the billows' might; 

The sea resounded. Since or before that 

Learned I never of a lady's leading 

O'er the streams of the deep, the street of the sea, 

A fairer power. Plunged through the water 

With straining sails the hastening sea-wood, 

The leaping steed that strode through the waves. 

Happy the warriors, for their hearts were proud; 

The queen rejoiced that the journey was toward. 

Translation cannot hope to preserve the brilliant move- 
ment of passages like this, which is far removed from the 
thumping step of much alliterative verse; it cannot give 
an adequate notion of the color and variety of the poem, 
the love for the world of sight and sound that is inter- 
woven with imaginings that aspire to the eternal; and 
it can but imperfectly represent the clear visualization 
characteristic of the poem. 

Yet through dwelling over-long on Cynewulf's more 
striking expansions I must not convey the impression that 
the Elene is a work of shreds and patches, wherein pro- 
portion is sacrificed to episodic glitter. Wherever in- 
crease of detail would have impeded the swift current of 
the narrative, there is no attempt to do more with the 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 75 

material than to express it in the style proper to the 
time: to convey by striking metaphor and repeated epi- 
thet the dignity inherent in the story. Even the most 
expanded passages, the reader will note, are not pictures 
of scenes or of men in repose, but true epic descriptions 
with the stir of action, past and present, running through 
them. The conversations also, which make up towards 
half of the poem, do not hinder the progress of the tale, 
but substantially contribute to the effect by bringing 
scenes into clear focus or by relating deeds of the past 
that could not otherwise be absorbed into the body of the 
work. The longest single speech, that of Judas before the 
Hebrew council, well illustrates the success of the pro- 
cedure. From the point of view of a patriot who is con- 
scious at once of the errors and the doom of his race, 
he tells the story of the crucifixion and its sequel, which 
for the sake of completeness must somewhere be included. 
Whatever suggestions may have come to Cynewulf from 
his original — and even the bald version of the Acta 
Sanctorum reports the conversation with considerable ef- 
fectiveness — he must be given the credit of informing 
both this and other speeches with life and poetic feeling. 
Indeed, in his version not only does the queenly dignity 
of St. Helena shine through her words, but Judas becomes 
a truly sympathetic figure, torn by conflicting emotions, 
the defender of a lost and unrighteous cause who gener- 
ously welcomes a better day. 

In such adaptation of his material Cynewulf reveals, 
I submit, no mean poetic ability. In the larger matters of 



76 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

construction as well as in the power and beauty of his 
phrasing he shows a mastery that cannot be regarded as 
wholly due to chance. He was artist as well as inspired 
singer. To be sure, he sometimes fell into absurdities, 
even in the Elene, as when he used the conventional word 
sige-beam ("tree of victory") to describe the crosses on 
which the two thieves were hanged; and he failed to 
remove Helena's reference to the Trojan War as a matter 
of common knowledge among the Jews, which offends 
modern taste. Moreover, he did not always make his 
meaning clear. But these are faults to be pardoned in his 
case as similar faults are forgiven many another poet of 
honorable name in our literature. The great accomplish- 
ment with which he and his school are to be credited is 
that they gave a noble type of narrative fit embodiment 
in poetry. 

The third of Cynewulf's signed contributions to legen- 
dary literature, The Fates of the Apostles, need not long 
detain us. Except that it chances to be preserved in the 
so-called Vercelli Book l directly after Andreas, and that 
it bears the name of Cynewulf, it would scarcely have 
attracted much attention as a work of literature or as a 
document in the history of culture. Because of these con- 
nections, however, it has been the subject of much debate. 
The runic inscription, long overlooked, was discovered by 
Professor Napier in 1888, which settled the authorship of 

1 One of the four manuscripts in which most of the extant Old Eng- 
lish poetry has come down to us. It is preserved in the cathedral library 
of Vercelli in northern Italy. 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 77 

the shorter and otherwise less important poem; but 
whether the inscription was intended to serve also as an 
epilogue to the Andreas has remained a question to which 
no certain answer can be given. It is safe, however, to 
regard The Fates of the Apostles as an independent poem : 
the English representative of those lists of the Twelve, 
giving brief accounts of their missions and deaths, which 
were circulated during and after the fifth century. These 
epitomes of apostolic history served the same purpose in 
a limited field as did the menologies for saints in general: 
they recalled the labors and sufferings of the founders of 
the Christian faith. 

In one particular Cynewulfs poem differs from all 
other surviving examples of the type. It gives no dates 
for the feast-days, and thus could not have served the 
practical purpose of a calendar. It is really more like an 
elegy than a menology, depending for effect upon the cu- 
mulative iteration so beloved of poets, especially during 
the Middle Ages, when the TJbi sunt formula had its great- 
est vogue. Opening with a statement of the glory won 
by these "thanes of the Prince" and of their guidance 
by lot to their fields of labor, the poet recites their fate 
individually or by couples in from three to thirteen lines. 
By means of the device just mentioned he avoids the 
danger of making a mere catalogue and imparts a flavor 
of romance to the brief summary. Somewhat as the poet 
of Widsith suggests far-off lands and days of old, but with 
more art, Cynewulf in his series of phrases stirs the recol- 
lection to thoughts of the apostolic wanderers. In the 



78 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

suspiciously ample and duplicated epilogue, which rep- 
resents almost one third of the whole, he begs the reader 
to pray for his welfare on that day when he must seek, 
like every man, his unknown habitation; and he exhorts 
us to call upon the God of ever-during power that He 
may give us timeless recompense. Whether or not he 
should be literally interpreted when he says that he col- 
lected his material from afar, he clearly made the same 
imaginative use of it as in his longer and more important 
poems. Though his immediate source is unknown to us, 
we may be sure from the forms of the proper names which 
he used that he had read some Latin account of the apos- 
tles. Professor Krapp, in the most recent edition of the 
poem, shows that he probably had before him the list or 
lists from which Bede prepared his Martyrologium. The 
Fates of the Apostles possesses no extraordinary literary 
merit, but it is not unworthy to bear Cynewulf's name; 
and it has extrinsic interest as showing the devotional 
attachments of Anglia in the eighth century. 

At one time or another, and by one scholar or another, 
so much anonymous Old English poetry has been ascribed 
to Cynewulf that one is driven to skepticism as to the 
value of argument from internal evidence. Yet the exami- 
nation of such matters as structure, diction, syntax, and 
metre has had certain useful results. Even though it has 
not established beyond question whether Cynewulf wrote 
this poem and that, it has at least given increased knowl- 
edge of his manner, and emphasized the stylistic peculiar- 
ities of poems belonging to his school. Of the unsigned 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 79 

works that have been attributed to him, only two fall 
within the scope of the epic legend: Guthlac and Andreas. 
GuthlaCy as has long been recognized, really consists of 
two poems, each provided with an introduction and a 
conclusion, each a unit. The first, which is now usually 
termed Guthlac the Hermit (vv. 1-790), describes the entire 
life of the saint: how he turned from the evil courses of 
his youth, sought refuge in the solitudes, endured temp- 
tations, and died. The second, or Guthlac' s Death (vv. 
791-1353), after reviewing briefly the fame and tempta- 
tions of the hermit, narrates with great fulness of detail 
the circumstances attending his end. These two poems 
are the only examples preserved (however many may 
once have existed) of the epic legend with a native saint 
as hero. Somewhat curiously, considering the probable 
Northumbrian origin of both poems, Guthlac himself was 
a Mercian. From the vita by Felix, which is the source of 
all our knowledge about the saint, it appears that he came 
of noble stock, was a warrior in youth, became a monk 
at Repton in Derbyshire, and two years later sought a 
retreat in the wilderness. He found refuge first near 
Grantchester in Cambridgeshire and subsequently at 
Crowland, an island in the Fens of Lincolnshire, where 
he lived a hermit till his death in 714, overcoming the 
temptations of the devil and doing many wonders. Felix, 
who seems from the dedication of his book to have been 
an East Anglian monk, stated that he derived his knowl- 
edge of Guthlac from Wilfrid, Cissa, and Beccel, who had 
known the saint. Though there is little reason to doubt 



80 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

that he gave the main facts of the life with substantial 
accuracy, it is clear that he formed his work and adorned 
it according to accepted models. Thus he borrowed from 
Bede's Vita S. Cuthberti both incidents and descriptive 
passages; and it is not unlikely that the entire text is a 
mosaic, of which Felix should be regarded as compiler 
rather than author. 

All this has its bearing on the two poems in the vernac- 
ular, which I have mentioned. Both of them, I believe, 
were based on the Latin vita. Guthlac the Hermit has of 
late years been regarded as independent of Felix, the work 
of some one who garnered from oral tradition the story 
of the saint's career. A careful comparison of the poem 
with the Latin text, however, convinces me that the 
former is throughout dependent on a literary source. l 
Not only does it contain nothing, save part of the pro- 
logue and one expository passage, for which a parallel is 
not furnished by Felix, but in phrase it frequently recalls 
the Latin. Since Felix, as we have seen, was not wholly 
without literary forbears, it is manifestly impossible that 
the poet of Guthlac the Hermit could have taken all the 
incidents of the saint's dealings with angels and fiends 
from reports of his personal friends. He did not follow 
his source straight on; yet, despite his references to the 

1 This opinion is based on a fresh examination of the documents, 
though the details of the evidence cannot here be presented. I regret 
that in a review of Forstmann's Untersuchungen zur Guthlac- Leg ende, 
published in Englische Studien, xxxiv, 95 ff., I too hastily adhered to 
the contrary view. 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 81 

evidence of men still living, he showed no independent 
knowledge — only the poet's power of moulding and 
organization. There is no reason, then, why we should 
interpret his statements that Guthlac "was tempted in 
times that men remember" and that "we are witnesses 
of these wonders" in quite a literal sense. The poet was 
but recalling the evidence produced by Felix, just as 
hagiographers have customarily done with their originals. 
Unfortunately, this dependence on a literary source 
leaves the date of Guthlac the Hermit, which has been 
taken as a certain landmark of the mid-eighth century, 
altogether doubtful. Not impossibly the poem may have 
been written by a contemporary or a follower of Cyne- 
wulf. 

That Cynewulf himself was the author is not likely to 
be held by anyone, I think. The writer had not the 
power of interpreting a situation in apt and telling 
phrases, for which Cynewulf was so remarkable. In the 
focussing of events he was scarcely inferior, but he did 
not marshal them with the same clearness. Though he 
centred the reader's interest, as did Cynewulf, in Juliana, 
on the spiritual conflict and made the protagonist an 
heroic figure, he did not succeed in presenting the ad- 
ventures of the saint with that combination of epic vigor 
and brilliantly metaphorical language which character- 
izes the Elene. At his best, as in the descriptions of 
Guthlac's hermitage in the fens, which had been the 
home of demons, or in the narrative of the saint's vision 
of hell (vv. 529-704), which forms the climax of the work, 



82 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

he had moments of splendor; but he depended too much 
on reminiscent formula and descended too frequently 
into homiletic explanation, to be a great poet. 

With Guthlac's Death the case is different. Except for 
one passage, which briefly reviews the saint's glorious 
career, his temptations, his care of the birds, and his 
visitation by the sick of body or soul, the entire poem is 
based on a single chapter of the vita. Phrase after phrase 
is taken up in order and expanded quite as a musical 
theme is developed by a composer. Since young Eve 
poured out the bitter drink for Adam, death has rulecj 
over man. So to Guthlac in the waste came at the end 
of his days disease and suffering. To his servant, who 
visited him each day, he foretold his death and spoke 
words of comfort. 

My son beloved! 
Be not of soul too sad ! I am ready now, 
Eager for the journey, for everlasting joy, 
According to my works in life to have reward in Heaven, 
To see the Lord Triumphant, my son so dear! 

On the seventh day he felt the near approach of death 
"strong and terrible," and he commanded his disciple to 
go to his sister after his departure with messages of love 
and cheer. At the man's request to know with whom he 
had been wont to talk in the twilight and at dawn, he 
revealed the fact that he had entertained each day an 
angelic visitant, who had given him consolation. That 
day and all the night the holy man was guarded by the 
servant, until at sunrise he lifted up his hands, opened 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 83 

his eyes, and released his glorious soul. The servant, 
terrified by the sound of angel voices and the light that 
encompassed the dwelling, mourning for his lord, took 
his boat and sought his master's sister. 

In these scenes, which offered comparatively little op- 
portunity for depicting action, the poet showed a command 
of his art that merits unreserved admiration. He had to 
depend upon situation, psychological analysis of the two 
characters, and description of aspects of nature that were 
in harmony with both, to rouse and hold the interest of 
his hearers or listeners. He had no hosting of armies or 
stormy adventures to relate, no splendid visions of heaven, 
earth, or hell: only the simple story of how a holy man 
fell sick, conversed with his servant about his experiences 
in the solitude and his expectation of heaven, and how 
the faithful retainer fled before the awful wonders that 
accompanied his death, to carry the tidings to the world. 
All this the poet treated with a directness that befitted 
the theme, making no attempt to deck it out with bor- 
rowed verbiage or to romance about serious things. 
Although the subject-matter was expanded with the 
utmost freedom, there is almost nothing superfluous 
throughout the poem. The impression that it gives 
is one of compactness. Yet this plainness is not due to 
poverty of phrasing, for nowhere does the verse sink to 
bald statement of fact. It is straightforward, but touched 
with the fire of imagination; and it rises, when there is 
need, to the heights of poetic expression. So upon the 
description of the ineffable glories of the saint's transit 



84 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

to Heaven, of the music and perfume that filled the earth 
and air, and of the servant's flight, there is lavished such 
wealth of imagery as only a poet who loved the beauty 
of the visible world could have devised. 

This was the poet's art: to paint in subdued colors 
against which the richness of a few scenes might be dis- 
played to the greater advantage. Yet as a whole the poem 
is not sombre, for it is lighted by the saint's quiet joy in 
his approaching end. He is not regretful even for his 
sister's sake, though his stifled tenderness towards her 
comes out in his messages of farewell. The most pleasing 
feature of the poem is perhaps the relationship that is 
pictured as existing between the dying Guthlac and his 
disciple. It is not surpassed in beauty by the closing 
scenes of Beowulf, which tell of the devotion of Wiglaf to 
his lord, hard-pressed, mortally wounded, and dead. It 
preserves in noble verse one of the most exalted ideals 
of our early English forefathers: the dependence of man 
upon master and of master upon man. Nor is the merit 
of this performance to be attributed to the Latin of the 
monk Felix, even though the author of Guthlac' s Death 
has been ignorantly termed a "slavish" translator. One 
has but to read the two works side by side to see how the 
poet has transmuted the base metal of his original. 
Indeed, to find an equally sympathetic expression of 
man's terror in the presence of the great forces of nature 
as is shown in the flight of the servant across the sea, it 
is necessary to go to Lear or The Prelude. Whether or 
not Cynewulf wrote the poem we cannot be sure, though 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 85 

no one has shown that such may not have been the case. 
Certainly he had equal power of vivid description, a 
similar richness of phrase, and the same constructive 
imagination, in dealing with his materials. Quite pos- 
sibly, as Wiilker long since suggested, the lost conclusion 
of the poem may have contained Cynewulf's signature. 
Even more celebrated than Guthlac's Death, and quite 
as significant in the history of the legendary type, is the 
Andreas, an Odyssey of the Apostle St. Andrew. Like 
the Elene, it has for its theme a romantic story well suited 
to epic treatment; and, more nearly than any other of 
the poems we have been considering, it approaches the 
native heroic manner of Beowulf. It tells a part only of 
the cycle of legends that grew up about the personality 
of the apostle as early as the beginning of the fourth 
century, representing specifically certain chapters of the 
Greek Acts of Andrew and Matthew in the City of the 
Anthropophagi, which is its indirect source. That it was 
based directly on a Latin version of the Acts has been 
proved with sufficient certainty, though only fragments 
of such a rendering have been discovered. With its wild 
adventures and extravagant marvels, which are as pro- 
nounced in the Greek original as in the Old English poem, 
it perpetuated the older stream of tradition respecting 
Andrew: an apocryphal history that was gradually re- 
vised into conventionality by the writers of the western 
Church. Indeed, the Andreas and a prose version found 
in the Blickling Homilies are the only representatives of 
the early form of the legend that have survived in the 



86 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

languages of western Europe. Among the English the 
story had good reason for popularity, both because of the 
natural devotion of their missionary, St. Augustine, to 
St. Andrew as patron of the monastery in Rome from 
which he was taken to labor in the northern island, and 
because of their sympathy with the romantic voyages of 
the apostle. 

As I have said, of all the examples of the epic legend 
that we possess, Andreas approximates most closely in 
diction and poetic adornment the native heroic poems. 
On this account it has been credited with a degree of 
literary merit somewhat beyond its real worth. In in- 
dividual passages it does not lack dignity and beauty, but 
the narrative is not fused into any large unity of design. 
Though it glitters with barbaric splendor of phrase and 
rivals the best old Germanic poetry, pagan or Christian, 
in bold metaphor and imaginative description, it fails to 
subordinate the particular scene to the general plan as 
do Juliana, Elene, or Guthlac's Death. Could the poem 
be regarded as primitive, the work of an author less 
sophisticated than the Beowulf poet or Cynewulf, this 
lack of proportion might be disregarded for the sake of 
the untamed vigor that not infrequently characterizes 
folk-song. But in phraseology Andreas is clearly imita- 
tive, markedly conventional even among poems in which 
the formula is used without hesitation as an ordinary 
vehicle of thought. Furthermore, it is indebted to older 
poems, particularly to Beowulf, for the method of hand- 
ling its plot. Though the framework was taken from the 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 87 

Latin Acts of Andrew and Matthew, the situations were 
developed in such a way as to recall the adventures of 
the heroic Beowulf: a chieftain endangered, the sea- 
voyage of the rescuer, a victorious contest, and a safe 
return to the land of departure. In phrase and in struc- 
ture, then, Andreas is reminiscent, in phrase not unsuc- 
cessfully so, but in structure less happily dependent. 

After a brief introduction in praise of the apostles, the 
adventures of Matthew in the land of Mermedouia are 
recounted. Imprisoned and awaiting the pleasure of the 
man-eating natives, he prayed for help and was assured 
by the voice of the King of Heaven that Andrew would 
come to his aid. To Andrew in Achaia came God's voice, 
bidding him save his brother and informing him that a 
ship would be ready at dawn to convey him. At the 
haven he found the vessel, manned by the Lord Himself 
and two angels in the disguise of sailors. God bargained 
with him for passage-money but at length agreed to 
carry both the apostle and his disciples, as thanes of 
Christ, scot-free. Somewhat more than a third of the 
poem is occupied with this naive bargaining and the sub- 
sequent tumultuous voyage. Once arrived, Andrew took 
counsel with his followers, heard their dream of Paradise, 
received instructions from the Lord, and saved Matthew 
— who thereupon abruptly disappears from the story. 
Andrew then rescued a young Mermedonian, who had 
been appointed by lot to take Matthew's place as provi- 
sion for feasting, encountered and overcame the Devil in 
debate, and was imprisoned. After being tortured thrice, 



88 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the saint was miraculously healed, and, through prayer, 
raised a flood that rose higher and higher until the bold 
heathen begged for mercy. He then caused the earth to 
open and engulf not only the waters but the wickedest of 
his enemies. When he had brought to life the children 
drowned in the flood, he baptized the thoroughly con- 
verted pagans, established a church, and took ship for 
Achaia, while the sorrowing people watched him from the 
sea-cliff and sang a triumphal hymn in praise of God. 

Wild enough the story is, and sympathetic to the 
temper of a poet whose Christianity had modified only 
slightly racial instincts of long standing. By the device 
of representing the apostles and their followers as thanes 
of the Lord, and the Mermedonians as champions of 
Satan, the author achieved a rough-and-ready unity of 
structure that is not ineffective. Upon the comitatus, the 
true heroic loyalty in life and death, he based all the re- 
lations of his characters. Unhappily he did not fit these 
Germanic trappings into the fabric of the tale, as a 
greater poet would have done — as Cynewulf did in 
Elene. There is much sound and fury with very little 
significance in many of the descriptions. Thus the Mer- 
medonians attack the solitary and defenceless apostles 
with all the noisy panoply of war; the voyage of Andrew 
is developed to most disproportionate length; 1 and the 
night of snow and bitter cold that attends the hero's 
imprisonment, excellently pictured though it is, has no 

1 Contrast the restraint of the description of the hero's journey to 
Hrothgar's court in Beowulf. 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 89 

such interpretative value as the terrors of the night when 
Guthlac died. On the other hand, matters necessary to 
an understanding of the story, like the cure of Matthew's 
blindness and his movements subsequent to the rescue, 
are strangely neglected; and points that called for treat- 
ment with epic breadth, like the actual rescue of Mat- 
thew, are passed over with unbecoming brevity. 

This failure to realize the epic possibilities of the theme 
is the chief defect of the poem and marks it as the work of 
a secondary and imitative poet rather than of a master 
mind. On that account it seems to me improbable that 
Cynewulf was the author. To be sure, like other poets, 
he may have had his failures as well as his successes; but 
in his signed poems he displayed signal powers of mar- 
shalling events, an unerring instinct for the vital points 
of a narrative, and a gift of intense visualization, that 
are not evidenced by the gifted author of Andreas. The 
imperfect adaptation of Germanic traits to epic structure, 
which is at once the charm and the weakness of Andreas, 
is not characteristic of Cynewulf. In default of any clear 
evidence as to authorship, it is probably better to regard 
the poem as the work of some unknown upholder of the 
Northumbrian poetic tradition, a writer who was no 
mean poet, though he strained overmuch after striking 
verbal effects. 

The poems above described are the only examples of 
the epic treatment of saints' lives that have been pre- 
served to us among the wreckage of Northumbrian cul- 
ture. They represent, one must suppose, a much larger 



90 SAINTS* LEGENDS 

body of verse, which celebrated the heroes and heroines 
of the Church in true Germanic fashion. ^Elfric, for ex- 
ample, at the close of the tenth century spoke of a 
Passion of St. Thomas in verse, of which we have no other 
trace. Although conjecture as to the extent and the 
content of these lost legends is idle, the specimens which 
we owe to the chance survival of a few manuscripts give 
good cause to regard the movement that brought them 
forth as one of the most remarkable in the history not 
only of English literature but of hagiography as well. 
They illustrate the vitalizing contact of Christian civili- 
zation with barbaric genius, and furnish at least one 
instance of old wine poured into new bottles to the ad- 
vantage of both. By the noble and artistic form which 
their writers gave the legendary type, no less than by the 
inspiring poetic narratives which they furnished to a peo- 
ple just struggling out of barbarism, they laid both the 
Church and the English race under heavy obligations. 

The epic treatment of Christian subjects was not con- 
fined to legends of the saints or to Great Britain. It was 
part of the larger movement in which various ecclesias- 
tical materials were transformed by the Germanic muse, 
though nowhere except in England do the surviving mon- 
uments permit even a guess as to the course it ran. In 
Old English literature the so-called paraphrases of the 
Old Testament, like the older Genesis, Exodus, and 
Daniel, which are really heroic poems rather than trans- 
lations, mark the first stage of the adapt at ive process. 
Cynewulf 's masterpiece, the Christ, and the brief Dream 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 91 

of the Rood, which may be his work, have the same char- 
acteristics as the epic legends of their time, though they 
are essentially lyrical, and mark the second stage. From 
a later time, the superb fragments Judith and Genesis B t 
the second a translation from an Old Saxon poem inter- 
polated in the older Genesis, show how the influence of 
the movement continued into the ninth or even the tenth 
century and became, probably through English mission- 
aries, international in its scope. 

Two poems of unknown authorship and date (though 
they must have been written after Cynewulf 's time) de- 
serve particular mention because of the legendary char- 
acter of the material on which they were based. They are 
the Harrowing of Hell in the Exeter Book and a section 
of a loosely woven series of poems in the Junian MS., 
which deals with the events that succeeded Christ's 
passion. So loosely woven is this series that, though it 
is collectively known as Christ and Satan, it has little 
right to an inclusive title. The section that concerns us 
may well be called the Harrowing of Hell, since, like the 
poem of the Exeter Book, it is based, even though at 
one remove, on the Descensus Christi ad Infernos from the 
Gospel of Nicodemus. In these two poems were made the 
first attempts to popularize material that during many 
centuries was to be part of the common legendary store 
of the English. These attempts were not, it must be said, 
extraordinarily successful. Of the two, the Harrowing of 
Hell from the Exeter Book, with John the Baptist as 
spokesman for the throng of captive souls, has the better 



92 SAINTS* LEGENDS 

form and not a little dramatic tensity; yet it merely sug- 
gests, without rivalling, the narratives of Cynewulf and 
his school. The poem from the Junian MS., on the other 
hand, shows the weaknesses of the heroic manner with few 
of its compensations : its emotionalism is incoherent, and 
its formulae have no power. Both were probably based 
directly on Latin homilies now unknown to us; and both 
were composed, it is clear, in the tradition of the great 
Northumbrian poetry but not by great masters of it. 
Quite possibly they show the havoc to the native litera- 
ture that was wrought by the invasion of Norse pirates. 
The ravages of the Scandinavian invaders, which began 
in 793, certainly explain in large measure the decline of 
the epic type, both Christian and pagan. As it was de- 
pendent on the Church in its origins, it suffered from the 
eclipse of learning that darkened England for nearly a 
century. Though the great monastic school at York, 
which had contributed Alcuin to the Carlovingian renais- 
sance just previous to the beginning of the Danish in- 
cursions, seems to have retained for a time something of 
its power, Anglia's day of poetic and scholarly glory was 
past. The ignorance which King iElfred deplored in the 
preface to his translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care y and 
which he did much to dissipate, settled upon the land. 
If more saints' lives in verse were written, they have 
perished without record. The West Saxon revival of 
learning failed to kindle the old flame. The meagre relics 
of poetry from post-iElfredian times that we possess 
show a lingering instinct for composition both on secular 



THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 93 

and ecclesiastical themes, but little of the former power. 
A Menology, composed in the second half of the tenth 
century, served the useful purpose of a vernacular calen- 
dar of feast-days and imitated the phraseology of the old 
poetry, but it named no native saints and had no trace 
of originality. Among the poetical entries in the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle is one in celebration of Edward the Con- 
fessor, a workman-like scrap of verse but in no way so 
remarkable as the parallel entry which contains the 
Battle of Brunanburh. The Old English epic legend was 
dead. 



CHAPTER IV 

PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 




pHILE lives of saints in verse were being fash- 
ioned in a new and unusually interesting 
form by the fusion of native and foreign 
elements, the prose legend took its own 
course, following in somewhat pedestrian wise the well- 
travelled roads of hagiography. From the very begin- 
ning of the movement that evangelized Great Britain 
during the seventh century, there seems to have been a 
perfectly natural tendency on the part of the leaders to 
encourage the writing of saints' lives, according to conti- 
nental models, in the official language of the Church. 
There was no reason, indeed, why these legends should 
differ in matter or style from those of other lands. The 
missionaries who came from the North had the learned 
traditions of the Irish Church behind them, while the fol- 
lowers of Augustine continued to cherish their fellowship 
with Rome. Both before and after Theodore organized 
the scattered missions of Britain, during the latter part of 
the century, into something like ecclesiastical unity, the 
island Christians in no wise regarded themselves as sep- 
arable from the rest of the world. They manned the out- 
posts of God's empire — that was all. They had the same 
faith and the same rites; they reverenced the same holy 
men and women; and if they were scholars, they read 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 95 

the same books that gave comfort and delight to the 
Church at large. 

According to the general habit, evidenced by the local 
martyrologies of all times and localities, the English 
paid special honor to certain saints. They would natu- 
rally copy or write lives of those martyrs and confessors 
whose cults were popular among them. They soon came 
to have saints of their own also, and they would wish to 
record the acts and miracles of these native leaders. To 
that end models were at hand: the monastic libraries of 
both the South and the North were well-furnished with 
books. Their scholars needed only to adapt, according 
to their own ideas of style, the written materials at their 
command. What they learned orally they could shape 
along lines established by the same well-marked tradition. 

It is not necessary for us to pass in extensive review 
the great number of Latin lives of saints written in Great 
Britain previous to the Norman Conquest, since of them- 
selves they belong rather to the history of general hagi- 
ography than to the English branch of the subject. Only 
in so far as they furnished matter to writers in the ver- 
nacular, or were the work of outstanding church leaders, 
or contained the records of native saints, do they concern 
us. I shall mention a few specimen lives from the seventh 
to the eleventh centuries to illustrate the course they 
followed. 

Most notable of the literary productions of the Celtic 
Church in Britain is the life of St. Columba, the sixth cen- 
tury missionary, by Adamnan, who held the abbacy of 



96 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Iona during the latter part of the seventh century. 
Adamnan based his Vita on an earlier life of the saint by 
Cummian, one of his predecessors at Iona, but he treated 
his subject with great independence and charm. By 
virtue of his position he must have had access to all 
sources of written information about Columba, and he 
must have known from boyhood the oral traditions that 
had been preserved in the region of the saint's labors. 
Through his knowledge of western Scotland and the 
islands adjacent, and through his power of gathering pic- 
turesque detail, he was enabled to give his readers of all 
time not only a clear outline of Columba's life but a 
picture of the scenes among which the saint preached and 
wrought his miracles. The work is an admirable specimen 
of the biographical legend. Its author was perhaps over- 
credulous; but he was clear-sighted, and uncritical only 
with respect to powers invisible. He makes his readers 
feel the penetrating and flaming spirit which drove the 
saint across the sea from Ireland to found a monastery 
on the desolate islet of Hy, and to preach the Gospel 
among the savage tribes of the North. He shows the 
simple godliness of Columba's life: how he combined the 
gift of divination with that feeling for the actual which 
we call common-sense, how he dealt masterfully with sin 
and unbelief, yet gave himself with utter devotion to the 
care of his flock. There is a touch of humor in the relation 
of certain incidents, as when a monk, who had come to 
Columba with a newly made copy of the Psalms to cor- 
rect, was told forthwith that a single i in such-and-such 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 97 

a chapter remained undotted. The death of the saint is 
related with rare feeling and good taste. Adamnan's 
style is not free from the barbarous Greek derivatives by 
which the ecclesiastics of the time (and monks of Irish 
training certainly no less than others) exhibited their 
learning; but it is clear, and it has a measure of academic 
elegance. 

Contemporary with Adamnan was a great writer of 
Wessex, St. Ealdhelm, who was abbot of Malmesbury 
and died in 709 as Bishop of Sherborne. He was educated 
in the best schools of the day, probably first under the 
Irish scholar Maelduib at Malmesbury — an interesting 
bit of evidence as to the influence of Irish learning in 
southern Britain — and later under Abbot Hadrian at 
Canterbury. Of all English-born writers before the Con- 
quest, save Bede and Alcuin, he has enjoyed the most 
wide-spread and lasting renown. I have spoken in the 
previous chapter of his English verse, which has unhap- 
pily been lost. Interesting as are the works preserved to 
us, they scarcely compensate for the disappearance of 
the vernacular poems, whatever may have been the sub- 
jects treated in them. Two of his Latin treatises, only, 
deal with hagiological matters : De Laudibus Virginum 
sive de Virginitate Sanctorum, in which he illustrates the 
virtue of chastity by giving short biographies of holy 
men and women of every time and land; and a rendering 
of this prose work into hexameters. With a few excep- 
tions, the saints mentioned in the two versions are the 
same. The chief interest to us in these laudations of the 



08 SAINTS* LEGENDS 

saints is the wide knowledge shown by Ealdhelm, as well 
as the limitation of his interests. He chose his examples 
from among the heroes and heroines of the Scriptures and 
of the eastern and western Churches, but he included 
only one saint from Gaul, Martin, of Tours, and none 
whatever from Celtic or English regions. His bookish 
tendencies are faithfully reflected in the list; and his 
learning merits the praise bestowed upon it by Bede: 
"erat eruditione mirandus. ,, That he was also "sermone 
nitidus," according to Bede's further judgment, no one 
would now agree, for his style is essentially labored, 
pompous, and artificial — stiff with the pedantry of over- 
emphasized knowledge. 

A greater writer than Ealdhelm and one of the greatest 
scholars of the Middle Ages, though he lived as a simple 
monk until his death, was Bede himself. The debt we owe 
him for information about the early political and religious 
history of Great Britain cannot be over-estimated, while 
his activity in a surprising variety of literary fields makes 
him the most interesting figure of his century. He was 
born in 672 or 673 and passed his entire life as a member 
of the double monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow. The 
account of himself which he gave at the end of his 
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum tells the story of 
his quiet life: "I was born in the territory of the said 
monastery, and at the age of seven I was, by the care of 
my relations, given to the most reverend Abbot Benedict, 
and afterward to Ceolfrid, to be educated. From that 
time I have spent the whole of my life within that mon- 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 99 

astery, devoting all my pains to the study of the Scrip- 
tures; and amid the observance of monastic discipline 
and the daily charge of singing in the Church, it has been 
ever my delight to learn, or teach, or write. In my nine- 
teenth year I was admitted to the diaconate, in my 
thirtieth to the priesthood, both by the hands of the most 
reverend Bishop John, and at the bidding of Abbot Ceol- 
frid. From the time of my admission to the priesthood 
to my fifty-ninth year, I have endeavored, for my own 
use and that of my brethren, to make brief notes upon 
the holy Scripture, either out of the works of the venerable 
fathers, or in conformity with their meaning and inter- 
pretation." This was written in 731. Four years later 
he died, chanting on his death-bed, according to the 
letter of one of his fellows, not only hymns of the Church 
but also this song in English ("for he was skilled in our 
native songs"): — 

Ere he travels the road he must take at the last. 
No man can be wiser than is well that he be, 
In pondering deeply, before his departure, 
How much of good or how much of evil 
After his death-day is doomed for his soul. 

Aside from the commentaries and homilies, which Bede 
seems to have valued beyond his other works, this remark- 
able man wrote not only a number of scientific treatises 
but the histories through which he is best remembered by 
the modern world. He was, indeed, the greatest historian 
and hagiographer of his age. Before 705 he composed a 
metrical Life of St. Cuthbert, and fifteen or twenty years 



100 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

later he made another version of it in prose. For both he 
used an earlier life by an anonymous monk of Lindisfarne. 
Evidently an enthusiastic admirer of the sainted North- 
umbrian leader, who twice fled from ecclesiastical office 
to live as a hermit on the desolate isle of Fame, dying 
there in 687, Bede was rather the enthusiastic eulogist 
than the biographer of his hero. He enlarged and exag- 
gerated the stories of Cuthbert's asceticism and miracles, 
which he found in the earlier Vita, and he embroidered his 
narrative with rather too much rhetoric. His account of 
the saint's death, however, which he got independently 
from an eye-witness, was worthy of his pen ; and in general 
he refashioned the cruder phrases of his predecessor into 
the polished and smoothly-flowing Latin of which he 
was master. Historically more important than the lives 
of Cuthbert is his work on the abbots of Wearmouth and 
Jarrow, in which he wrote the biographies of Benedict 
Biscop, Ceolfrid, Eosterwine, Sigfrid, and Hwsetbert. 
These men he knew personally, and he gave a succinct 
account of their lives without sacrifice either of personal 
feeling or of impersonal judgment. The fact that none 
of them has been canonized does not lessen the importance 
of the work to the student of hagiology: so Bede would 
have written of a saint whose deeds he could report at 
first hand. 1 

More important for the history of saints' lives, however, 

1 Bede used an anonymous work by a member of his own commu- 
nity as the basis of his Lives of the Abbots, but he could control all the 
facts from his own experience. 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 101 

as well as for history of every sort, than the biographies 
above-mentioned, was Bede's Ecclesiastical History. In 
it, while tracing the story of the Church in Britain, he 
had occasion to give longer or shorter notices of more 
than forty different saints. He wrote the work when ap- 
proaching the end of his life, and he had at command a 
store of erudition such as no other man of his day pos- 
sessed: knowledge gained from books in many fields, 
from men who had borne their part in events spiritual 
and secular, from close observation of humanity, and 
from meditation on the divine will. He wrote with ripe 
wisdom and with rare power of expression. In his pages 
he recorded the deeds and deaths of the saints, from 
Alban to Wilbrord, who had made illustrious the mission- 
ary era of the Church in Britain. Though he was perhaps 
over-fond of interpreting natural events as special mani- 
festations of God's grace, he was not credulous in any 
bad sense : only so devout of temper that the supernatural 
seemed to him a normal element of life. The acts of the 
hermits, missionaries, abbots, bishops, and kings he re- 
counted somewhat briefly, as was necessary in a book of 
so wide a scope; but he gave all the essential facts of 
their lives, and sufficient comment to make the reader 
understand the positions they held in their own times. 
Indeed, he combined brevity of statement with fulness 
of detail in a manner worthy of emulation by any histo- 
rian whatsoever. In so far as modern scholars have been 
able to test his statements of fact, he has been found com- 
mendably free from error, extraordinarily careful in the 



102 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

use he made of materials drawn from many sources. As 
a general rule he freely acknowledged his obligations to 
previous writers, though his very freedom from pedantry 
possibly kept him at times from citing names that we 
would gladly know, since his work was destined so largely 
to supersede that of his predecessors. Everywhere (save 
perhaps in his account of St. Wilfrid) his good faith is as 
transparent as his style, which is a model of good taste and 
quite untouched by any affectation of spurious classicism. 
Aside from writing the works mentioned above, Bede 
translated from the verse of Paulinus a life of St. Felix 
the Confessor, corrected " ad sensum" a life of St. Anasta- 
sius which had been badly translated from the Greek, and 
wrote a general martyrology in which he embodied, ac- 
cording to his own statement, not only all the names of 
martyrs that he could discover but such facts as to their 
passions as he was able to collect by diligent study. 
This martyrology was, indeed, one of his best-known and 
most influential works. Unhappily it suffered so much 
revision in subsequent centuries, notably by Florus of 
Lyons in the ninth century, that Bede's part in the com- 
pilation, as it has come down to us, cannot well be de- 
termined. Certainly many entries in the surviving version 
seem foreign to Bede's spirit, but it would be uncritical 
on that account to reject them, as the most recent editor 
of the historical works is inclined to do. A poetical mar- 
tyrology in hexameters, attributed to Bede, cannot be 
his, however, since it mentions facts that took place after 
his death. 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 103 

The work used by Bede as the basis for his account of 
St. Wilfrid of York in the Ecclesiastical History, though 
he gave no acknowledgment of his indebtedness in this 
particular case, serves to illustrate the kind of biography 
ordinarily written by disciples of saints during the early 
part of the eighth century. It is a vita by ^Edde, who in 
669 was brought to Northumbria from Kent by Wilfrid to 
teach chanting, and subsequently was closely attached to 
the person of the tempestuous bishop, apparently accom- 
panying him on his last journey to Rome. Wilfrid died 
in 709 after a career of more than forty-five years as 
bishop, though for much of that time he was not actually 
in possession of any see. Despite the controversies into 
which he plunged the Church of Northumbria, not wholly 
through his own fault, Wilfrid did much to establish the 
regular practice of religion in the North; and for five 
years of his life he labored as a missionary in Sussex and 
the Isle of Wight. Self-willed and impetuous though he 
must have been, he lacked neither zeal nor ability; and he 
found an eager defender of his romantic life in iEdde. 

Although by no means so good a Latinist as Bede, 
Mdde wrote comprehensibly, and did not fall into stupid 
bathos, as the authors of that day were prone to do. 
Unfortunately he had no gift of portraying character and 
wrote a somewhat dry record of events rather than a 
sketch of the saint's personality. As far as a partisan 
could, he seems to have told a straightforward story; but 
he was little interested in Wilfrid's spiritual experiences 
and, on the other hand, was greatly concerned to defend 



104 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

his patron's acts against the calumny of enemies. He was 
writing, be it remembered, not long after Wilfrid's death 
and at Wilfrid's monastic stronghold of Ripon. ^Edde 
recorded few miracles : the commonplace wonders attend- 
ing the saint's birth; occasional cures wrought during his 
lifetime; a case of healing by means of the water in 
which his shroud had been washed; and a couple of mani- 
festations by flame and sky, indicative of his sanctity. 

A vita of quite another sort, though probably written 
not many years later, is the life of Gregory the Great by 
an anonymous monk of Whitby. It illustrates the diffi- 
culties experienced by a sufficiently conscientious scholar 
in writing the biography of a foreign saint who had been 
dead for more than a hundred years. Although it is the 
earliest life of Pope Gregory extant and the chief author- 
ity for most of the miracles attributed to him by later 
biographers, it gives but a scanty record of his deeds. 
The author himself complained that he could not tell 
more about the saint's life because materials were lack- 
ing, and that he was thus forced to narrate miracles. To 
be sure, he justified his course by saying that many per- 
sons were accustomed to gauge the merits of a saint — 
" and not without reason " — by the signs he had wrought; 
but, no doubt with the notion of giving it greater his- 
torical solidity, he devoted a considerable section of his 
work to an account of the conversion of Northumbria 
and the life of King Edwin. In part he treated of things 
known to us also through Bede, but the correspondences 
are due to the independent use by each of the Liber 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 105 

Pontificalis and Gregory's own writings. The monk of 
Whitby succeeded in making, despite the difficulties under 
which he worked, a most valuable little treatise, inter- 
esting not only for its information about the miracles 
thus early attributed to Gregory and about the history of 
Anglia, but also as the only surviving production of the 
great monastic school at Whitby. From it we should 
know, even if we had no other evidence, how remarkable 
a centre of enlightenment was the convent established 
by St. Hilde. 

In the chapter preceding this I have spoken of the 
Life of St. Guthlac by Felix, but I mention it once more 
to illustrate how a writer of the mid-eighth century some- 
times plumed a native saint with borrowed verbiage even 
while he gave with seeming accuracy the facts of his 
career. More original in treatment than this, and more 
interesting from the point of view of literature, are the 
lives of St. Wilbrord, the British apostle to the Frisians, 
which were written in verse and prose by the famous 
Alcuin towards the end of the century. Alcuin himself, 
the most illustrious scholar of the school of York, the 
librarian of that foundation, the founder of the school of 
St. Martin's at Tours, was a disciple at one remove of 
Bede. He wrote his lives of Wilbrord in the enlightened 
spirit to be expected of a man of his training and en- 
dowments — in the same temper in which he later com- 
posed his sketch of the great Emperor Charlemagne, his 
patron. He was panegyrist as much as biographer and 
did not hesitate, any more than his master Bede, about 



106 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

paying as much attention to miracles as to other inci- 
dents. He cultivated a style more ornate than Bede's 
and was fond of quotations, but he had genuine eloquence 
and not a little personal charm of manner. His poem 
on the bishops and saints of the church of York, which 
doubtless owed something to Bede's prose History of the 
Abbots, furnishes another illustration of the urbane fash- 
ion in which it was possible for a learned writer at the 
end of this remarkable eighth century to treat the history 
of a church on the frontiers of civilization. Not alto- 
gether dark was the age of the self-possessed and polished 
Alcuin. 

The ninth century presents another story. The Scan- 
dinavian invaders, who swept over England and well-nigh 
overwhelmed the Church in the renewed tide of barba- 
rism, plunging the country into a weltering sea of blood 
and war, made for a time both the practice of religion 
and the cultivation of all the arts most difficult. King 
Alfred's evidence as to the state of learning in his time, 
to which I have already referred, shows why we have so 
few literary monuments, either in Latin or English, dating 
from the century that separated him from Alcuin. The 
revival of learning that iElfred instituted and fostered 
seems to have spent itself largely in copying older works 
and in translating Latin prose into the vernacular — a 
movement then first begun ■ — rather than in producing 
anything new. Apparently the writing of saints' lives 
remained in abeyance, since we have few indications of 
Latin works from that period. In the second half of the 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 107 

tenth century, however, the renewal of culture had pro- 
gressed so far that fresh biographies of saints were once 
more in demand. English lives were written in large 
numbers, as we shall see, while native saints were again 
celebrated in Latin. Two of these vitce will serve to illus- 
trate the character of all. 

In the year 981 a monk of Winchester, named Lantfred, 
undertook to write a Translatio et Miracula Sancti Smith- 
ini. The date we know, because the author stated that 
he was writing ten years after the translation of the 
saint's relics, which took place in 971. Lantfred knew 
nothing about St. Swithin's career and did not attempt 
to reconstruct his legend, contenting himself with an 
account of the means by which the monks of Winchester 
were made aware of the merits of the sainted bishop, 
and describing with considerable detail the miracles 
wrought at the shrine during a single decade. Taken in 
conjunction with iElfric's narrative of the same events, 
written some fifteen or sixteen years later in English, the 
work possesses great interest for the history of cult, 
though Lantfred was deficient both in critical sense and 
in literary charm. He was probably intent only on record- 
ing the cures by which his monastery had gathered wealth 
and fame; yet he revealed much more than he proposed, 
for the turgidity of his style shows how necessary were 
the efforts then making to counteract the evils of igno- 
rance. It is curious to reflect that he wrote while the 
enlightened iEthelwold, who built up the great school 
of Abingdon, was bishop of Winchester. The opening 



108 SAINTS* LEGENDS 

of one of Lantfred's tales (discreetly omitted by ^Elfric) 
may be cited to illustrate how easily the imaginings of 
simple folk were at that time accepted as fact. A citizen 
of Winchester went out to the meadows beside the river, 
one day, to look after his horses. He fell asleep in the 
afternoon sunlight and awoke to see two black women, 
like furies, who chased him towards the town. They were 
stopped by an enormous woman, clad in snowy raiment, 
who wounded the man in the right side and left him with 
scarcely strength enough to crawl to the city gate. He 
was subsequently cured at the tomb of St. Swithin. 

Of a far higher order than Lantfred's work, both in a 
literary and in an historical sense, is the earliest life of St. 
Dunstan of Canterbury, which was written about the year 
1000. The author, who styled himself B, seems to have 
been a scholarly continental Saxon driven overseas by 
some misfortune. He was a personal follower of Dunstan 
and a witness of many of the scenes that he described. 
His work thus belongs to the class of biographical leg- 
ends which have historical value as well as hagiological 
interest. It is written in a stiff and pompous style, but 
it never sinks into absurdity, apparently because the au- 
thor had no illusions as to his ability in writing. He was 
a devoted disciple of the great reformer and archbishop, 
to whom Church and state alike owed a great debt 
during the last years of Anglo-Saxon independence; and 
he was chiefly interested in showing what manner of man 
he had served. He traced Dunstan's history from birth 
to death, but he touched lightly on certain phases of it, 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 109 

like the saint's monastic reforms, which, though import- 
ant, would have come little within the direct knowl- 
edge of a man who was first drawn into the archbishop's 
circle at Canterbury. There is much likelihood in the 
suggestion of Bishop Stubbs that the stories of Dunstan's 
childhood, the accounts of his early temptations and 
visions, were taken from the saint's own lips, since they 
"bear the impress of the same mind, a mind slightly 
morbid and very sensitive, but pure and devout, void of 
grossness and grotesqueness." Indeed, though the life 
is full of wonders, they are largely subjective: contests 
with the powers of evil or clairvoyant visions. B's vita 
stands in marked contrast to the life by Adelard, written 
within the next decade, which shows how the saint had 
already become a hero of legend rather than of history, 
a worker of miracles rather than a man highly endowed 
with imagination, energy of mind, and administrative 
ability. 

Legends in Latin thus followed the fortunes of eccle- 
siastical learning throughout the entire pre-Conquest 
period. They furnish an entirely trustworthy index to 
political and religious conditions. Of lives of saints in 
English prose, before the latter part of the ninth century, 
we have no trace. Presumably it was deemed sufficient, 
while the impulse to poetic production endured, to use 
the vernacular for verse only, which would appeal to 
the ears of the unlearned. Men who could read would 
be able to read Latin, and would prefer to use that 
tongue. The decline of the epic and the eclipse of learn- 



110 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

ing during the ninth century brought about, however, 
an entirely different state of affairs. King iElfred ex- 
pressed his wonder that the men of a former day should 
have neglected to open the books of the past to the un- 
lettered, and he himself did much by translating, or 
inspiring translation, to remedy this deficiency. One of 
his works, the translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, 
properly concerns this hagiological record. Though it 
was an adequate rendering of the original, the translator 
omitted and condensed wherever, as far as one can see, 
the matter seemed to him unimportant. Accordingly it 
is interesting to note the changes made in Bede's treat- 
ment of the saints: that, for example, the accounts of 
Gregory and Augustine were considerably reduced, and 
the activities of German and Columba passed over with- 
out mention. 

From some time in the second half of the ninth century 
dates a vernacular prose Martyrology, recording twenty- 
one English saints among more than two hundred of for- 
eign origin. The work, which is not only clumsy as to 
style but inaccurate as to fact, shows the depth of igno- 
rance from which ^Elfred rescued England. Except as illus- 
trating the difficulty with which learning was kept alive 
at all during the wars of the ninth century, it has no 
importance. It was made in some monastery of Mercia, 
perhaps of Lincolnshire, as has been conjectured from the 
inclusion of three saints from that county; and it was 
certainly based on a Latin original, though whether it 
was a verbal translation or an abridgment has not been 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 111 

determined. Yet at a time when very few men on either 
side Humber could, in Alfred's phrase, "understand 
their service books in English or translate even a letter 
from Latin into English," this martyrology, crude though 
it was, must have been useful. 

As we have seen, the iElfredian revival of letters had 
no immediate effect in producing lives of saints. What- 
ever the cause, during the first half of the tenth century 
there seem to have been written very few legends either 
in Latin or in the vernacular. In English there is pre- 
served a life of St. Chad, the Mercian bishop of the seventh 
century, which could not have been made later than 950; 
but it stands quite alone, a waif, and a very ragged one. 
It seems to be the translation of a Latin homily for use 
on the saint's day, which was in turn based on Bede; 
and it follows Bede's account slavishly, though often in- 
accurately. It was written in Anglia, as was natural in 
view of the restriction of Chad's fame at the time. That 
no worthier representative of the prose legend than this 
should have been left to us may be partly due to chance, 
but to all appearances very few lives were written until 
the Benedictine reform of the monasteries in the second 
half of the tenth century. 

From the time of this movement, however, and prob- 
ably on account of the revived interest in all ecclesiastical 
matters which accompanied the adoption by such mon- 
asteries as Abingdon, Winchester, Glastonbury, and Can- 
terbury of the form of the Benedictine rule that had 
been established at Fleury, the writing of legends in 



112 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

English prose became a much practised art. If we may 
judge properly by the specimens preserved, this activity 
produced nothing of great value, from the point of view 
of literature or of history, except for the work of a single 
author, iElfric. However, certain translations of which 
I shall first speak serve to illustrate the lines along which 
popular devotion ran during the second half of the tenth 
century. 

In Anglian territory was made a free translation of 
Felix's Vita S. Guthlaci, which had served in the eighth 
century, or the early ninth, as the basis for two poems 
about the hermit of the Fens. From the fact that this 
prose rendering survives in two versions (though one is 
a mere fragment) we are led to suppose that St. Guthlac's 
fame had continued to be cherished at least in the mid- 
land counties of England. The translation avoids the 
bombast of the original, but it has no individuality of its 
own despite the liberties taken with the text of Felix. 
It could hardly have been made at or near Crowland, 
where the saint was buried, else there would have been 
added at least some of the later miracles performed at 
his shrine. As it is, the work merely indicates the general 
effort to spread the knowledge of popular legendary 
figures among the less learned members of the com- 
munity. I may add that one of these two versions of the 
prose Guthlac seems to have been used as a homily on 
the saint's day. 

The Blickling Homilies, also. of Anglian origin and of 
about the same date, likewise include a half dozen legends. 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 113 

These homilies are a collection of sermons in prose, pre- 
served in a manuscript at Blickling Hall in Norfolk. The 
approximate date of the collection is assured by the 
statement in the homily for Holy Thursday, where the 
writer names the year 971. It should be said, however, 
that this date cannot be assumed to be exact save for 
the particular sermon in which it occurs. The homilies 
have received much praise as early examples of good 
prose narrative; but they deserve it only in so far as 
adequate translation may always be commended, for 
Professors Foerster and Napier have shown that their 
merit is due almost entirely to the Latin texts on which 
they were based. All of the legends save one, which deals 
with a foreign saint, are from biblical or apocryphal 
sources. There is an Assumption of the Virgin, an account 
of the Birth of John Baptist, a free and careless transla- 
tion of the Apparition of St. Michael at Mt. Garganus, 
and an equally free but somewhat better rendering of the 
Life of St. Martin by Sulpicius Severus. They seem to 
be the work of various men, collected by the scribes who 
put together the Blickling MS. To a single translator 
are probably due a Peter and Paul and an Andrew, 
which are taken literally from well-known Latin ver- 
sions of the apocryphal acts of the apostles. From the 
fact that two of the legends have been found in other 
manuscripts than that containing the homilies, it is clear 
that the desire for stories of the saints in the vernacular 
was not limited to any one monastery. If it be permis- 
sible to judge from the lack of explanation and moraliz- 



114 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

ing, these translations were not made through the direct 
influence of the schools of Dunstan and iEthelwold; but 
they could scarcely have been written except for the 
Benedictine reform which those two great men did so 
much to promote. 

Two fragments concerning the legends of the Kentish 
royal family during the sixth and seventh centuries, one 
of them probably written at St. Augustine's in Canter- 
bury, show what interest was felt at this time in the his- 
tory of purely local saints, and show likewise the impulse 
to make a record of them in English. These two frag- 
ments, which are quite unliterary in character, have a 
common source in Bede but are mutually independent: 
more than one monastery in Kent, it would seem, felt 
concerned with St. Mildred and her relatives, who had 
aided the missionaries in their efforts to establish Chris- 
tianity in the kingdom of which they were the rulers. 
The same tendency to preserve in English speech the 
names of English saints is illustrated by a menology, 
usually entitled The Saints of England, which survives in 
several manuscripts. The writer, who, from the number 
of Wessex saints whom he cited, seems to have been a 
West Saxon, compiled a list of ninety men and women 
whose merits had raised them to sainthood. He gave no 
account of them, not even their dates, but after the 
manner of the primitive martyrologies merely recorded 
their burial-places. He headed his list with Alban and 
carried it in somewhat disorderly fashion down to his 
own day. That the work was regarded as being of per- 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 115 

manent value is shown by the fact that numerous copies 
of a Latin translation of it, made in the following cen- 
tury, have been preserved. Because of its originality it 
does, indeed, possess far greater interest than the ninth 
century Martyrology previously mentioned. 

On the other hand, the close relations that subsisted 
between the English and Gallican Churches during the 
second half of the tenth century are indicated by a frag- 
mentary Passion of St. Quentin, a martyr of Amiens in 
the days of Roman rule. From the few lines left us (pre- 
served in the same manuscript with Beowulf) the legend 
seems to have been a free but not particularly happy 
translation of a Latin Passio which has survived in its 
entirety. Unimportant though the fragment is on any 
other score, it shows that under the influence of a new 
discipline the regular clergy were beginning to introduce 
new cults in order to strengthen and inspire believers by 
the example of men who in neighboring countries had 
met death for the faith. 

Although the works of which I have been speaking 
have considerable interest as showing the trend of devo- 
tion to the saints and the increase of knowledge that was 
taking place, they would be insufficient of themselves to 
mark the later tenth century as unusual for its produc- 
tion of saints' legends in English. The writings of one 
man, however, were so noteworthy that the last years of 
the century, at any rate, must be regarded as remarkable. 
The author in question was iElfric. 

The identity of this great man, whose zeal for the edu- 



116 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

cation of his countrymen has been surpassed by no one 
in the long history of English letters, who united with 
his enthusiasm, moreover, very considerable learning and 
a certain grace of style, remained obscure from at least 
the twelfth century till the middle of the nineteenth. 
By the time of William of Malmesbury, about 1120, it 
had been so far forgotten that William spoke of Mtfric 
as the abbot of his own monastery, an ^Elfric who after- 
wards became bishop of Crediton. In the era of the 
Protestant Reformation, and later, as scholars came to 
study the writings and personality of iElfric, he was sup- 
posed to be either the archbishop of Canterbury who 
died in 1005 or the archbishop of York who died in 1051. 
Yet he could have been, it has been found, neither of 
these men; and he was a person of far less importance 
than they in the government of the Church, though in 
learning and in ultimate influence far greater. Born 
about the year 955, he seems to have been placed at an 
early age in ^Ethelwold's monastic school of Winchester. 
There he gained a knowledge of Latin, of Church history, 
and of theology that fitted him to become the greatest 
teacher of his age and a writer skilled in the use of both 
the learned and the vulgar tongues. Though he cannot 
be regarded as a great universal scholar like Bede, he 
absorbed such learning as had been provided for the apt 
student by the Benedictine revival of letters, and he 
acquired an intellectual enlightenment that was remark- 
able in a generation not much removed from the one in 
which, according to M\i ric's own testimony, " no English 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 117 

priest could write or understand a letter in Latin." It 
was, no doubt, his realization of the abysses of ignorance 
which had engulfed his countrymen between iElfred's 
time and his own that turned his energies of mind towards 
the spread of education rather than the increase of his 
own learning. He was capable, for himself, of distin- 
guishing the true from the false, in matters of fact, but 
he was content to follow the teachings of his masters 
when it came to niceties of interpretation. In his own 
writings he professed the wish to give sound information 
without troubling his readers with subtleties beyond 
their grasp or with things likely to corrupt their faith; 
and he was not unsuccessful in so doing. A man of deep 
sympathies he must have been, broad-minded and intelli- 
gent, possessed withal of real fervor of spirit. 

In 987 iElfric was sent from Winchester to the newly 
founded abbey of Cernel in Dorset, where he was oc- 
cupied in teaching the monks. How long he remained 
there we do not know, but we may assume with some 
measure of certainty that he returned to Winchester to 
resume his work as teacher and writer. During this 
period, in addition to the homilies of which I shall speak 
later, he composed treatises on the computation of time 
and other natural phenomena, wrote a Grammar and an 
elementary Latin reader in dialogue form, prepared a 
Glossary of Latin and English, and translated several 
books of the Old Testament. In 1005 he was sent to 
Eynsham as abbot of a monastery just established there 
by the Ealdorman ^Ethelmser, who had been his patron 



118 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

and friend from early manhood. From this time till his 
death, which probably took place between 1020 and 1025, 
he seems to have found less leisure or incentive to write; 
but he made excerpts from iEthelwold's De Consuetudine 
Monachorum for the use of his monks, prepared an intro- 
ductory work On the Old and New Testaments, added 
various sermons to-his earlier series of homilies, and com- 
posed a Latin vita of his spiritual father, St. ^Ethelwold. 

The writings of iElfric that give him importance in the 
history of English legends are three series of discourses, 
the first two usually designated as Catholic Homilies, and 
the third as Passions or Lives of the Saints. Each series 
was designed to include forty homilies, running through- 
out the Church year, though several sermons were added 
by the author to the original number. The first two 
series were dedicated to Archbishop Sigeric and must 
have been completed between the years 990 and 994, 
while that prelate held the see of Canterbury. The third 
series can be dated between 996 and 998 by a reference 
to iEthelwold as a saint and the address to the Ealdorman 
JSthelweard, who probably died soon after that time. 

Although the two earlier collections were designed for 
the instruction of laymen in the gospels appropriate to 
the Sundays and general festivals of the ecclesiastical 
year, while the third series had the express purpose of 
telling the unlearned what they ought to know "about 
the passions and lives of those saints ... whom the monks 
honor with special services," all three have a similar 
homiletic tone. Between the first and second series there 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 119 

is this difference: the first contains more scriptural nar- 
rative and exegesis, the second more history and legend. 
In the third collection this tendency is so far developed 
that most of the numbers contain narratives of the saints, 
though tempered with much explanation and moralizing 
comment. It will be seen that, as his work proceeded, 
iElfric became more and more the story-teller, less and 
less the preacher. The same causes that led to this, one 
cannot doubt, made him use increasingly a rude form of 
alliterative verse as his medium of expression. His sym- 
pathy with the young, which appeared very charmingly 
in the dialogue of his Latin reader, no less than his passion 
for the proper education of the unlearned, which can be 
seen in many passages throughout his works, dictated his 
choice of the subjects and the style of treatment that 
would most captivate his audience. He had no fear, 
obviously, of popularizing. 

In the two series of Catholic Homilies iElfric told the 
legends of ten apostles, and mentioned, but did not nar- 
rate, the history of St. Thomas, because it "long since was 
translated from Latin into English verse" and because 
it contained one incredible incident. He also included 
such well-known legends as Laurence, Basil, Clement, 
Dionysius, Benedict, and Martin, as well as Theophilus, 
the Apparition of St. Michael, the Seven Sleepers of 
Ephesus, and the Invention of the Cross. In his second 
series he drew on Bede for certain legends of peculiar 
interest to the English, giving Gregory the Great and 
Cuthbert, and the visions of Furseus and Drihthelm. He 



120 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

also gave in his third series a few stories of English 
saints — Alban, Etheldred, Swithin, Oswald, and King Ed- 
mund ; but he made the most marked departure from 
his earlier choice of subjects by the introduction of women 
saints into his lists. Except in the case of St. Swithin, 
whose fame as a worker of miracles was but two decades 
old and had come under his personal observation at 
Winchester, he related only legends that could have been 
found in any well-stocked monastic library of the time. 
Certain narratives he used more than once, like that biog- 
raphy of Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus, which he 
translated with something like completeness in his Lives 
of the Saints after having told the story briefly in the 
Homilies. 

iElfric, though he called himself merely a translator, 
did far more than turn Latin prose into his own tongue. 
He was more than a compiler, indeed, as we ordinarily un- 
derstand compilation, for he kept his mind alert against 
error, bad taste, and inexpediency — open to purpose and 
effect. The range of his reading was perhaps less wide 
than would be indicated by the sources of his material, 
since, as Professor Foerster has remarked, he may have 
found most of his originals in a few collections of legends. 
At the same time, he must be given credit for a vigor of 
handling that is most admirable. A legend never suffered 
from his treatment. Teacher he always was, as I have 
said, but a wise teacher who knew when and how to use 
pure narrative. 

His verse, which is often scarcely distinguishable from 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 121 

rhythmical prose, illustrates his talent for adapting a par- 
ticular means to a given end. Far removed from the 
verse of the epic legend in all the elements of style, lack- 
ing characteristic epithets and sometimes even the allit- 
eration inherent in the form, it yet differs from prose in 
the choice and grouping of words; and doubtless it had for 
its readers and hearers a charm difficult of perception by 
modern scholars to whom the laws of Old English poetry 
seem more immutable than they did to the men of the 
tenth century. In any case, iElfric used his rhythm in a 
manner peculiar to himself, and gave to such legends as 
he chose to present in verse a form very interesting in the 
history of legend-writing. Greater master of prose than 
of verse he certainly was, probably the best writer in that 
medium, as far as English was concerned, before the 
Norman Conquest, but he was not unskilled in the art of 
poetry as well. His Latin, whether in prefaces to various 
English works or in his Life of St. jEthelwold, shows the 
same characteristics as the rest of his writing: simplicity, 
directness, effectiveness. Indeed, this vita of the man to 
whom he owed and acknowledged a great debt for en- 
lightenment of spirit is distinguished from the mass of 
tenth century legends by the same qualities that make all 
his work remarkable. It is free from bombastic rhetoric, 
and it is distinguished by clarity of judgment and speech, 
while warm with sympathy and tender with knowledge. 
In the opening years of the eleventh century was living 
a great homilist, whose name is inseparably connected 
with iElfric's, though in the writing of legends he took 



122 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

little part. Wulfstan, to whom I refer, was archbishop of 
York from 1002 until 1023. Of the sermons ascribed to 
him because of somewhat vague hints in manuscript col- 
lections only eight, as was proved by Professor Napier, 
can safely be considered his, though Dr. Kinard has 
since shown that seven more have such a marked simi- 
larity to the others that they may well be the work of the 
same author. None of the sermons proved to be Wulf- 
stan's contains a legend: he was fervent in preaching as 
iElfric was fervent in teaching, and apparently he found 
narrative no help to his earnest exhortation. Certain 
other writers, however, with whose work the scribes have 
mixed his, used the legend with considerable effect. In 
one sermon of the collection there is a brief account of 
the adventures of Peter and Paul with the magician 
Simon; in another there is a story, taken from Gregory of 
Tours, of a dead child who, through the merits of St. 
Maurice, was allowed to comfort his mother with song; 
and in still others there are visions of heaven and hell. 

A few scattered legends from the eleventh century 
should be mentioned here to complete the history of the 
type up to the Norman Conquest. Some of them are 
mere fragments, and they indicate no important varia- 
tions in choice of subject or manner of treatment after 
the time of iElfric. Some of them, however, possess con- 
siderable intrinsic interest, either because they show what 
saints were held in special veneration or because they 
represent early forms of particular legends. 

There is, in the first place, a group of stories from the 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 123 

apocryphal gospels. The Irish and English Churches pre- 
served these books, and obviously loved them, though 
the wisdom of Rome had for centuries been trying to 
uproot the more fantastic of them and to prune the 
remainder of their heterodoxy. iElfric, who used the 
apostle legends from the Abdias collection, was aware of 
the faults of the apocryphal stories and long hesitated to 
translate the Passion of Thomas on that account. Other 
writers were less prudent. Thus we have preserved in an 
eleventh century manuscript brief fragments in Latin and 
English of Jamnes and Mambres, a legend that had been 
pretty thoroughly destroyed elsewhere than in England. 
The very popular Pseudo-Matthew was likewise translated 
in part, though in no distinguished fashion, giving the 
history of Mary up to the birth of Christ. Certain pe- 
culiarities of the version may perhap's be due to a Latin 
text different from any still extant. More important than 
this are three forms of a translation of the Gospel of Nico- 
demus, which could not have been made later than 1050. 
Christ's "harrowing of hell," based on this source, had 
been a theme popular with the Northumbrian poets, as 
we have seen; its continued popularity to the end of the 
Old English period is attested by this rather free render- 
ing of the story. Two forms of the V indicia Salvatoris, an 
important early form of the Veronica legend, also exist, 
though they seem to be variants of the same transla- 
tion. 

Of interest and value, quite apart from its place among 
English legends, is the History of the Holy Rood-Tree* 



124 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Although preserved by the hand of a twelfth century 
copyist, it has been shown by its editor, Professor Napier, 
to represent a translation made in the eleventh century. 
No other version of the legend of the Cross in this form 
from so early a date is known to exist. The history begins 
with Moses and is carried down to the final disposition 
of the Cross by St. Helena. Presumably the merits of 
the Old English work are due rather to the lost Latin 
original than to the translator, yet it must be praised as 
a clear rendering of a highly interesting story. The Dis- 
covery of the Sacred Cross, which has the same theme and 
in general the same details as Cynewulf's Elene, is like- 
wise an intelligent, if uninspired, translation from the 
Latin. Apparently the original must have been very 
similar to the text of the legend printed in the Bollandists' 
Acta Sanctorum, which possesses few of the traits adapted 
by Cynewulf so admirably to the purposes of his epic 
narrative. 

The considerable range of reading that was open, even 
to the unlearned, during the eleventh century, is indicated 
by three tales from the Vita Patrum, which were trans- 
lated by some unknown writer of the time who did not 
share iElfric's scruples about opening the "subtleties" of 
that work to the laity. 1 Two of the tales are mere anec- 
dotes from the Verba Seniorum which Pelagius put into 
Latin; but the third gives the surprising history of the 
Syrian Malchus, a renegade monk who was captured by 
Saracens and only after the most romantic adventures 
1 See his Latin preface to the Lives of the Saints. 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 125 

found his way back to his monastery. In old age he told 
his story to St. Jerome, by whom it was recorded. Such 
a tale, even in a crude translation, would give the common 
men of England a breath of the Orient such as the earlier 
Phoenix showed them to be capable of appreciating. 
From the Vitoe Patrum was also taken a life of St. Mary 
of Egypt, which is found in three manuscripts of yElfric's 
Lives of the Saints, though apparently inserted in the 
completed work by some later scribe than the original 
copyist. The translation was done at least after the 
manner of iElfric and under his influence; yet because of 
the doubts cast upon its origin it cannot now be admit- 
ted into the canon of his legendary writings. 

A somewhat peculiar legend is that of St. Michael, 
known to us by a single manuscript. It reviews the deeds 
and glories of the archangel in the fashion of panegyric, 
up to his dragon-fight. Though in prose, it has something 
like a refrain, recurring at intervals: "This is the holy 
high-angel Saint Michael." As to source and general 
treatment it still awaits investigation. A fragment of a 
Life of St. Christopher, preserved in the Beowulf manu- 
script, has no distinction save that it indicates a knowl- 
edge of the earlier form of that legend in eleventh century 
England, for it follows the Latin source closely and is 
written in clumsy prose. More interesting are the three 
versions of the Passion of St. Margaret, two of which only 
are extant. One of these seems to treat the Latin original 
with considerable freedom, although, as is often the case, 
we cannot be sure that we possess the text used by the 



126 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

translator. At all events, the legend is told in a clear and 
fluent style, not unworthy of praise. 

The lives of St. Giles and St. Nicholas, 1 found in the 
manuscript at Cambridge that contains one version of 
the Margaret legend, serve to show that these two saints, 
later very popular in England, were already the objects 
of devotion. The legends are written in good pedestrian 
prose and seem to be commonplace translations from 
Latin. 

It is remarkable that lives of English saints should be 
lacking among these eleventh century legends. Osbern, 
who wrote a Latin Life of Dunstan in 1067, speaks in his 
prologue of certain lives of the saint which were burnt in 
a fire at Canterbury sometime before that date, and adds 
that English translations of some of them still remained. 
However, all of them seem now to be lost. Of legendary 
character is a Vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia y which has 
by chance survived. This curious document, in suffi- 
ciently correct West Saxon, gives in reality an account of 
more than one supernatural manifestation to Earl Leo- 
fric, as well as some statements as to his holy manner of 
life. Most interesting is his vision of the bridge of souls: 
a borrowing from the Vision of St. Paul, which was to be 
popularized in Middle English times. Oddly enough, 
Leofric was shown St. Paul in priest's garb, conspicuous 
among the white-clad throng of the blessed. With regard 

1 For my knowledge of these legends, as well as of the St. Michael 
above mentioned, I am indebted to Professor Napier, whose transcripts 
I have read. 



PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 127 

to all of this we have no further knowledge. The dearth 
of lives of English saints, indeed, is but emphasized by 
the existence of a Life of St. Neot, about the date of which 
there is much doubt. Not even Dr. W. H. Stevenson, who 
has sufficiently accounted for the intrusion of this Latin 
legend, with its famous story of the burned cakes, into 
Asser's Life of King ffllfred, has altogether explained the 
relation of the English Life of St. Neot to the Latin lives. 
Without much doubt, however, he is right in dating all 
of them after the Norman Conquest. The border-line 
between legends written before and after that invasion 
is as difficult to draw as in the case of other literary works. 
The changes that came about were not immediately 
operative, nor was the English vernacular immediately 
discredited as a literary medium. 





Hll ihSH 



CHAPTER V 

NEW INFLUENCES: FEANCE AND THE CULT OF THE 
VIRGIN 

ROFOUND as had been the influence of the 
Scandinavian invasions upon English life dur- 
ing the centuries that preceded the Norman 
Conquest, they had been in their effects re- 
actionary rather than progressive. They enriched the 
island with good blood, contributed useful materials to 
tradition and important elements to the racial inheritance; 
but they retarded the advance of civilization by the 
havoc they wrought upon establishments of learning and 
religion. We have seen how England was pulled back into 
semi-barbarism, into abject ignorance certainly, during 
the ninth century and again during the tenth. After the 
Benedictine Reform, however, there was no further re- 
lapse, nor were the islanders ever again cut off from the 
religious and intellectual life of the Continent. Isolation, 
during the Middle Ages at least, jeopardized both re- 
ligion and learning; only by keeping within hail of their 
fellows could the teachers of the Germanic world hold 
themselves steady against the tide. Thus England may 
be counted fortunate to have had done with the sea- 
rovers at a time when affairs of Church and state in 
Europe at large were shaping themselves for advance. 
Dunstan and his coadjutors, by their introduction of the 



NEW INFLUENCES 129 

rule of Fleury, established a connection with France that 
the not very religious or learned dukes of Normandy were 
to strengthen in the following century. 

Long before the Conquest, England was thus deeply 
affected by French influences on her ecclesiastical and 
educational systems. The decadence of the kingdom of 
Wessex and the political and economic conditions that 
led to the expedition of William of Normandy do not here 
concern us save in one respect: they were marked by a 
steady and apparently increasing tendency on the part 
of the clergy of England and France to regard themselves 
as friends and allies. After the Conquest the substitu- 
tion of French prelates for men of native birth was only 
part of the Norman policy of control, but it served to 
strengthen the bond between the English and Gallican 
Churches. For the time being, of course, the intrusion of 
foreigners was bitterly resented. Numerous records of 
quarrels between abbots and monks show the difficulties 
that arose; and there is evidence of the contempt with 
which triumphant prelates from the Continent treated 
native institutions and native saints. Nor could it have 
been an incentive to general piety that Norman clerks 
found careers open to them on English soil, while the na- 
tive clergy were held in subjection. Yet the influence of 
such abbeys as Bayeux, Bee, and Caen was doubtless, in 
the end, an excellent tonic for the religious establish- 
ments of the island. 

The influence was, however, by no means one-sided. 
In some respects the English Church had long fulfilled 



130 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

its religious and educational duties more satisfactorily 
than its Gallican sister. No other conclusion can be 
drawn, it seems to me, from the early rise of a religious 
literature in the vernacular on English soil as compared 
with the later development of such works on the Conti- 
nent. The history of legend-writing, in particular, had 
been, as we have seen, both long and illustrious. Con- 
trast with it the tardy beginnings of saints' lives in 
French. 

A single manuscript preserves a life of St. Leger, and a 
Passion and a rude translation of a sequence to the 
honor of St. Eulalia, dating from the tenth century; a 
Vie de St. Alexis has come down to us from the eleventh. 
Aside from these works, the history of French legends 
begins only after the year 1100. As we have seen, the 
Passion of St. Quentin was translated into English during 
the second half of the tenth century. The earliest life of 
the saint in French, though he was a martyr of Amiens, 
was not composed till the thirteenth century. One must 
bear in mind, to be sure, that the oldest document in 
any Romance tongue is the record of the Oaths of Stras- 
burg, exchanged in 842; but the Church in France does 
not seem to have realized, until a century later, that the 
vernacular might be used to advantage as a vehicle of 
instruction. In England, on the other hand, the Church 
had early seized the opportunity to widen its influence 
by making a literature for the unlearned. The early 
written literature 'of the English would have been far 
less important than it was, without much doubt, had not 



NEW INFLUENCES 131 

the clergy from the days of Ealdhelm and Bede been so 
zealous for the instruction of laymen through the use of 
the vulgar tongue. Perhaps the very gradual develop- 
ment of the Romance speech from the Latin vernacular 
accounts for the difference. In England two apparently 
unrelated languages were employed, which might make 
the need of a popular literature more evident. Be that 
as it may, there is reason to believe that the close rela- 
tionship resulting from the Norman Conquest stimulated 
the production in France of legends, at least, in a tongue 
that could be understood by all. In this fashion England 
may be considered to have repaid very early her vast 
literary debt to her continental neighbor. 

This debt was contracted cheerfully and in lavish 
measure. Latin hagiographers from the earliest period 
of their activity in the West had been as busy in France 
as elsewhere. Gregory of Tours was, for example, famous 
throughout Europe, and, naturally, in England. Literary 
chauvinism, we must remember, is a product of modern 
times. Like every one else, the English borrowed quite 
frankly the cults and legends of foreign saints. After the 
Conquest, however, when the Normans became leaders of 
Church as well as of state, there was a marked increase of 
foreign influence. Though prelates may sometimes have 
scoffed at English cults, Norman clerks, with the vigor 
characteristic of their race, soon began to write the lives 
of both foreign and native saints in their vernacular as 
well as in Latin. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries 
were the period when the Anglo-Norman legend chiefly 



132 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

flourished; and during the first part of that time it 
smothered, though it did not quite kill, the legend in 
English. Then came about the amalgamation of con- 
querors with the conquered. The thirteenth century, 
when the French writers of England were most occupied 
with legends — the marvellous thirteenth century, with 
its passion for scholarship and religion as well as for the 
shows of the world — marked the beginning of a new 
era in the production of English lives of saints. As we 
shall see, however, the Middle English legend differed in 
several respects from the pre-Conquest type; and it dif- 
fered along lines established by the Norman clerks. Form 
and spirit were alike affected, although in the latter par- 
ticular the change was due as much to the temper of the 
times as to Norman influence. 

In some ways, of course, Anglo-Norman legends belong 
to the history of the type in England quite as much as do 
those in the native tongue. The spectacle presented is 
that of a bi-lingual country in which the ultimately domi- 
nant literature was for the time being under the tutelage 
of the literature that was destined gradually to disappear. 
It is necessary, then, that in considering saints' lives in 
English we take the French product into account at least 
in so far as it moulded English forms. Unhappily Ro- 
mance scholars have as yet paid so little attention to the 
genre, even by way of editing texts, that anything more 
than a summary sketch of Anglo-Norman legends could 
be attempted only after a prolonged study of manuscripts 
such as my special interest in English legends has not yet 



NEW INFLUENCES 133 

permitted me. Without the admirable bibliography of 
saints' lives in French recently published by M. Paul 
Meyer in the Histoire litteraire de la France, to which I 
am much indebted, it would be impossible for me even 
to estimate the extent to which the type was cultivated 
in Anglo-Norman England. 

It was, without doubt, the same impulse that led the 
Normans to write verse romances and verse legends. 
Both types were intended for recitation or chanting; 
and both depended, for their charm, upon loosely woven 
incidents centring in a hero or heroine. They held the 
interest of the auditor, generally speaking, not as did the 
epic, because the story was modelled into unmistakable 
coherence, but by the beauty or power of the individual 
situation. Whoever reads either the romances or the 
legends of the later Middle Ages, expecting other narra- 
tive qualities than these, will find them both dull and 
barbarous. Situations and characters are highly idealized, 
though passages of crudely realistic description are not 
infrequently found. The tales of various origin underly- 
ing the romances lent themselves to this treatment with 
the same facility as legends. The resulting works were 
addressed to the same audiences in many cases, no doubt. 
A thirteenth century summary of penances, relying upon 
the authority of Pope Alexander III, excepts from the 
reprobation of the Church such jongleurs as "sing the 
deeds of princes and the lives of saints." Probably the 
legends had a wider, if not more numerous, circle of ad- 
mirers than the romances, for they were beloved in con- 



134 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

vent as well as in castle. All through the period of their 
popularity, from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, 
the reciprocal relations of the two types, verse romance 
and verse legend, were intimate, and their effects on one 
another important. So much can be said with assurance, 
although the limits of the relationship have not yet been 
clearly marked. The legend of St. Eustace, as I showed 
some years ago, gave rise to a group of romances; Pro- 
fessor Bruce has on two occasions pointed out the influ- 
ence of the strange legend of Pope Gregory, with its sug- 
gestions of (Edipus, upon the Arthurian cycle; and other 
borrowings of romance from legend are not far to seek. 
There was, it would seem, a shuttle-like movement of 
material between the two genres. In a similar way, their 
topographical and linguistic relationships are involved 
and somewhat obscure. Whether they were written in 
French or in English makes little difference, except that 
the form they took was established by poets who used 
the Romance tongue. 

The body of Anglo-Norman legends in verse is remark- 
able. We have preserved to us something like seventy- 
five poems in French, written on English soil, dealing 
with the lives or miracles of about fifty different saints or 
biblical characters. This indicates an extraordinary ac- 
tivity in production, as well as a genuine interest in the 
type on the part of a very considerable audience. The 
materials of most of the poems were taken from what 
we may, without impropriety, call the common legendary 
stock. If we are justified in drawing any conclusion from 



NEW INFLUENCES 135 

surviving specimens, as seems reasonable, we may believe 
that the life of St. Margaret caught the popular fancy 
more completely than any other legend. We possess no 
fewer than seven versions of her martyrdom, all but one 
of them written before the end of the thirteenth century. 
Poems based on the various apocryphal histories of Christ 
are scarcely less numerous, while each of several other 
sacred figures is celebrated in two or more independent 
poems. At least six saints of the English and British 
Churches before the Conquest were honored in verse 
lives by Norman clerks : the proto-martyr Albany Audrey 
(or Etheldreda) the foundress of Ely, King Edmund 
of East Anglia, Edward the Confessor, the Irish virgin 
Modwenna, and the virgin martyr Osith of Essex, who 
perished in the ninth century. Two lives of Edmund, 
indeed, are extant, and three of Edward the Confessor. 
Aside from these works, there is a version of the marvel- 
lous voyage of St. Brendan, while five different adapta- 
tions of the Purgatory of St. Patrick by Henry of Saltrey 
are known to have been made by Anglo-Norman writers, 
the earliest being that done by Marie de France towards 
the end of the twelfth century, not long after the com- 
position of the original work. As was natural, there were 
written also lives of the great princes of the Norman 
Church, Thomas and Edmund of Canterbury and Richard 
of Chichester. One of the poems on the martyrdom of 
St. Thomas, that by Gamier de PoDt Sainte-Maxence, 
though not written in the Anglo-Norman dialect, was 
composed shortly after the archbishop's assassination and 



136 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

has independent historical value, since the author came 
from France to Canterbury and gathered his information 
there. 

The writers of these legends were, however, for the 
most part natives or residents of England, as far as we 
know them. Some of them, like Wace, who wrote lives 
! of St. Margaret and St. Nicholas as well as a double poem 
on La fete de la conception Notre-Dame and Uhistoire des 
trois Maries, about the middle of the twelfth century, were 
otherwise well known as authors. Adgar, towards the end 
of the same century, included several lives of saints in his 
collection of Mary legends; and in the early fourteenth 
century Nicole Bozon, who made an interesting book of 
contes devots, was a prolific writer of saints' legends in 
verse. It is a suggestive indication of the audiences ad- 
dressed that a considerable number of the poems were 
composed at the request of high-born ladies, just as 
romances were often dedicated to noble patrons. So 
Benoist wrote the early Vie de saint Brendan at the de- 
mand of Adela, the Queen of Henry I; and two anony- 
mous authors composed lives of Edmund Rich and Edward 
the Confessor for a countess of Arundel and Queen Eleanor, 
the wife of Henry III, respectively. Legends were some- 
times, at least, the work of monks and nuns, for we have 
preserved a Vie de sainte Foi by Simon de Walsingham 
of Bury St. Edmunds, a Gregoire le Grand by Anger of 
St. Frideswide's at Oxford, and a Catherine d'Alexandrie 
by Clemence, a nun of Barking, as well as a Vie de seint 
Auban by an unknown monk of St. Albans. 



NEW INFLUENCES 137 

Most of the Anglo-Norman legends in verse were writ- 
ten in octosyllabic rhyming couplets, a form beloved by 
romancers also and borrowed by Middle English poets. 
Other metres, sporadically used, were alexandrines with 
varying schemes of rhyme, a combination of decasyllab- 
ics with alexandrines in couplets, octosyllabic quatrains 
monorhymed, and tail-rhyme stanzas of six lines. The 
variety of these forms, together with the great prepon- 
derance of octosyllabic couplets, must be noted, since the 
Norman poets were responsible for the metrical fashions 
in vogue among English writers during the whole period 
opened by the Conquest. 

Besides the individual legends mentioned above, the 
Anglo-Normans possessed a translation in verse of two 
books of the Vita? Patrum. It was made in the thirteenth 
century by a templar of Bruer Temple in Lincolnshire, 
who was likewise the author of poems on the Antichrist 
legend and the Vision of St. Paul. Like ^Elfric, he judged 
parts of his original to be ill-adapted for the knowledge 
of laymen and used his discretion in omitting various 
incidents. He was not an accomplished man of letters, 
as is shown by the awkwardness of his style and the ir- 
regularity of his alexandrines; but his work possesses 
extrinsic interest as representing the only attempt, so 
far as is known, to make a straightforward translation of 
any considerable part of the Vitas Patrum into French 
verse. 

Unlike the legends in verse, the French lives of saints 
in prose, the composition of which began in the early 



138 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

thirteenth century, soon came to be collected into groups. 
Whether or not separately written, most of them have 
been preserved to us only in these collections, arranged 
either in something like hierarchical order or according 
to the calendar. As far as present knowledge goes, the 
legendaries with an arrangement according to the cal- 
endar were confined to the mainland, while the prose 
lives that circulated among the Normans in England 
were all contained in collections with the hierarchical 
arrangement. Four of these legendaries, allied in content 
or identical with works produced in France, are known 
to have been made in England. They were manifestly 
intended for private reading, and for that only, by persons 
seeking instruction and edification. They possess, indeed, 
more hagiographical than literary interest, although they 
doubtless gave their early readers a certain form of 
pleasure. The influence probably exerted by them on the 
arrangement of one of the English legendaries to be 
treated in the next chapter is the excuse for my emphasis 
on them here. 

Another collection that must be mentioned for the 
same reason is a huge work in verse, written about 1250. 
This is the Miroir or Evangiles des Domees by Robert de 
Gretham, who was probably likewise the author of an 
explanation of the sacraments in verse, entitled Corset, 
which he dedicated, as chaplain, to his lord Alain. The 
Miroir was dedicated to a Lady Aline, presumably the 
wife of Alain. The book is of portentous length, run- 
ning to more than twenty thousand verses in octosyllabic 



NEW INFLUENCES 139 

rhyming couplets. Beginning with the first Sunday in 
Advent, it contains homilies for the entire course of the 
dominical year, and for certain great feast-days. Each 
homily consists of a paraphrase of the gospel appointed 
for the day and an explanation of it in the analogical 
style of exposition then in vogue among preachers. About 
a quarter of the sermons are diversified by the addition 
of narratives more or less vaguely illustrative of the 
homiletic matter. These stories, which ally the work to 
such legendaries as iElfric's first collection, are for the 
most part simple conies devots, religious wonder-tales 
without addition of place or name. Four of them, how- 
ever, may be classed, as I have found from an examina- 
tion of the still unpublished manuscripts, among legends 
proper. There is an incident from the miracles of St. 
Cecilia, the Vision of Furseus, an account of the conver- 
sion of Thais, and an adventure of the hermit Macharius, 
the last two from the Vita? Patrum. On the whole, 
Robert's work has no great literary merit; but his flowing 
octosyllabic verse is not unpleasant, while his paraphrases 
of incidents from the New Testament and his other 
stories are well managed. The influence probably exerted 
by the Miroir, as we shall later see, on one of the most 
popular collections of religious verse in Middle English 
gives it peculiar interest in the history of our native 
legends. 

Along with the production of saints' lives in the Anglo- 
Norman tongue, the writing of Latin legends went on 
unchecked. Although they made no innovations in matter 



140 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

or treatment that clearly differentiated their work from 
that of the pre-Conquest hagiographers, the learned 
authors of the late eleventh and the twelfth centuries 
were so prolific that they caused the earlier lives, to be 
pretty much forgotten. In part they simply recast these 
legends in a new and, to their minds, more elegant form; 
in part they were occupied in writing lives of saints who 
had been their contemporaries. The latter works natur- 
ally have more historical worth than the others, and they 
also have more interest. Indeed, they compare favorably 
with the best biographical legends of all ages. The saints 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries bore a large share 
in the stirring movements of the time, religious, intel- 
lectual, and political; they were keenly alive; and, 
whether more absorbed in learning or in exalted medita- 
tion, in combating secular aggression or ecclesiastical 
weakness, they appear to us in the pages of their memo- 
rials attractively human. Their devoted followers, who 
thus pictured them, gave evidence of a spirituality and 
an acuteness of mind that were sometimes united in those 
fortunate ages. A few works, composed by outstanding 
hagiographers or dealing with remarkable figures, may 
be mentioned to show the drift of the Latin legend in 
England. 

At the end of the eleventh century the fluent Goscelin 
was perhaps the best-known writer of saints' lives on the 
island. He was brought to England by a bishop of Salis- 
bury, probably only a few years before the Conquest, and 
he celebrated the deeds of several saints of the native 



NEW INFLUENCES 141 

Church in Latin which is gracefully ornate, if not in the 
best possible style. To him we owe lives of Augustine 
of Canterbury, Swithin, Werburgh, Mildred of Kent, Edith, 
and Ives, all of which enjoyed great and lasting renown. 
Eadmer, a younger contemporary of Goscelin and a 
native Englishman, is best known for his three works on 
St. Anselm, the great and lovable archbishop who ruled 
Canterbury from 1093 till 1109. Eadmer was the chap- 
lain of his hero and wrote of him with outspoken loyalty 
and affection. He succeeded in picturing the man in 
colors that have not faded; he recounted the saint's long 
controversy with the secular powers with strict adherence 
to the truth as he saw it; he celebrated Anselm's merits 
and miracles with sobriety and good taste. Less praise 
can be given his other lives of saints, concerning Dunstan, 
Peter of Canterbury, Odo, Oswald, Wilfrid, Edward the 
Confessor, and Bregwin (mostly revisions of earlier works) ; 
but, whenever he wrote in prose, he expressed himself in 
a clear and simple style that makes his work pleasing in 
contrast to the turgidity of much mediaeval Latin. 

It is a point worthy of note that some of the most 
illustrious authors of the learned twelfth century regarded 
the composition of saints' lives as work suitable to their 
talents. So St. Ailred, successively abbot of the Cister- 
cian monasteries of Revesby and Rievaulx, who was emi- 
nent both as an ecclesiastic and as a writer of religious 
and historical treatises, composed lives of Ninian, Cuth- 
bert, and Edward the Confessor. Greater as an historian 
than Ailred was William of Malmesbury, whose De Gestis 



142 SAINTS* LEGENDS 

Regum Anglorum gave him a reputation comparable only 
to that of Bede. His Vita Aldhelmi and De Gestis Pontifi- 
cum Anglorum are informed by the same spirit as his 
secular histories: they show an abounding vigor and a 
feeling for the relationship of events without much criti- 
cal sense. John of Salisbury, one of the greatest scholars 
of the Middle Ages and by far the most accomplished 
Latinist in twelfth century England, was one of the early 
biographers of St. Thomas Becket. He had been a fellow 
student of Becket's in Paris, and remained devotedly 
attached to him throughout life, though he did not 
scruple to advise him in the plainest terms. Like his 
earlier life of St. Anselm, John's account of St. Thomas 
is brief; and it was similarly designed to pave the way 
for canonization. To us in the twentieth century the 
attitude of the great humanistic scholar to the great 
churchman is perhaps a little hard to understand. He 
had lived on the most intimate terms with the saint, both 
during the days when Thomas was a high-spirited and 
ambitious clerk and after he took upon himself splendid 
austerities as defender of the Church; yet he bore witness 
with undoubted sincerity of belief to the sanctity of his 
old comrade, and accepted without question the miracles 
wrought at Canterbury. His nearness to the man did 
not blind him, that is, to the significance of his friend's 
career. As a witness for the merits of Thomas and for 
the faith of his century he has equal interest. St. Hugh 
of Lincoln, who died in the last year of the same century, 
found a biographer and eulogist in another famous writer 



NEW INFLUENCES 143 

of the time, Giraldus Cambrensis, as keen-sighted, witty, 
and bold a spirit as ever lived. He knew Bishop Hugh 
intimately, aDd in his Vita he gave a striking portrait of 
the noble Carthusian saint, though he devoted the greater 
part of his work to an account of the miracles worked at 
the tomb. His intent, like John of Salisbury's, was doubt- 
less to help secure canonization for the fearless and out- 
spoken, yet humble and holy bishop. 

The biographies called forth by the deaths of St. 
Thomas of Canterbury in 1170, of St. Hugh of Lincoln in 
1200, and of St. Edmund of Canterbury in 1240 deserve, . 
indeed, special attention because of the light they throw 
upon conditions at the time. Aside from the French poem 
on Becket and the Vita by John of Salisbury, to which 
reference has already been made, there were written by 
the end of the century about twenty Latin accounts of 
the life or the martyrdom and miracles, many of them 
dealing with both. At least six witnesses of the assassina- 
tion in Canterbury Cathedral set down in writing what 
they saw. We thus possess almost unparalleled material 
for a critical understanding of the events. Although 
these works give reports which are as faithful to truth as 
ocular evidence can well be, they are properly classed as 
legends : they display the attitude of mind on the part of 
their authors that makes the genre a definite literary 
type. They have, indeed, something of the interest pos- 
sessed by the genuine passions of the early martyrs. St. 
Hugh of Avalon, as Bishop of Lincoln, was involved, like 
Becket, in controversy with Henry II, though he dealt 



144 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

more prudently with the chastened king. Besides the 
sketch of the saint by Giraldus, we have a long life by his 
chaplain Adam, who was later Abbot of Eynsham. About 
St. Edmund of Abingdon and Canterbury, who died in 
France after troubles caused by the weakness of Henry 
III and by insubordination within the Church, we learn 
from several contemporary lives. His brother Robert 
Rich, his chamberlain Bertrand, his friend Robert Bacon, 
and the celebrated chronicler Matthew Paris all wrote 
more or less elaborate accounts of him, not to mention 
less important lives. Holier and more learned, though 
just as militant a defender of the Church, Edmund Rich 
was as characteristic a product of the thirteenth century 
as was Thomas Becket of the twelfth. The contemporary 
biographies indicate the differences of temper between 
two ages as well as between two men. 

Of quite other character than the great ecclesiastics 
who contended with kings was St. Gilbert of Sempring- 
ham, who during the reign of Stephen founded the only 
monastic order that ever arose in England. Simple good- 
ness marked him as a man above others, for he made no 
account of his birth and learning; and he lived a hundred 
years in the exercise of abstinence and charity. Before 
his death he had built thirteen monasteries for his order, 
which remained in existence until the Reformation. A 
vita, written by a canon of Sempringham who had known 
the saint, is a straightforward narrative of his career, 
without extravagance, without embellishment — such a 
biography as Gilbert would have approved. 



NEW INFLUENCES 145 

No account of Latin legends written in England after 
the Conquest should omit the mention of two visions, 
which were first circulated during the twelfth century. 
To the Purgatory of St. Patrick by Henry of Saltrey I have 
already alluded. In its first form, written towards the 
end of the century, the visit of a certain knight, named 
Owein, to the church established by Patrick above an 
entrance to Purgatory is described at length. It is per- 
haps impossible for us, at this day, to estimate how far 
literal belief in the vision was carried; but it is clear that 
Henry of Saltrey intended to write something more than 
an idle tale or an allegorical exercise. Even less so- 
phisticated is the Vision of a Monk of Eynsham, written 
by the same Adam who composed the Magna Vita of 
Hugh of Lincoln. In 1196 a young religious of Eynsham 
lay for thirty-six hours in a cataleptic trance and, on 
recovering, related the purgatorial torments that he had 
witnessed. There can be no doubt of Adam's truthfulness, 
as Father Thurston has abundantly proved : he set down 
the narrative of the monk as he heard it. Together, the 
two visions just mentioned give us an indispensable un- 
derstanding of the religious feeling in England at the 
time. The enthusiasm of which they were born gave the 
later mediaeval legends their peculiar character. 

The influences upon the saints' lives that were to be 
written in Middle English, which have been thus far 
discussed in the present chapter, were largely dependent 
on territorial and political conditions. Forces of another 
kind were at work, however, which served to modify the 



146 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

type, both on the island and on the Continent. England 
lay open to the Church universal as never before, and she 
was swayed by the same impulses that were moving Eu- 
rope as a whole. The enthusiasm to which I have just 
alluded found expression, between the tenth and thir- 
teenth centuries, in the remarkable development of the 
cult of the Virgin, which influenced legend-writing as 
profoundly as it touched the hearts of men. Mary had 
been paid the highest honors by the Church, to be sure, 
since the fifth century at the latest. She had feasts and 
dedications, and she was held in the highest reverence. 
Her history was treated with epic breadth in apocryphal 
gospels. In the earlier ages of the Church, however, she 
had never fired the enthusiasm of the faithful as she did 
from the tenth century onwards. In curious contrast to 
later visions of Mary is that experienced by Wilfrid of 
York in 704, as recorded by his biographer iEdde. St. 
Michael appeared to him, bidding him build a church in 
honor of the Virgin. After the year 1000, at the latest, 
there would have been no question of an angelic mes- 
senger: the Virgin herself would have appeared. In Eng- 
land, as well as in Germany and France, we find during 
the tenth century an increased attention to the cult. So 
St. Dunstan devoted himself, we are told, to the service 
of the Lord and of Mary; and holy men everywhere dedi- 
cated themselves to the Mother of God. This tendency 
became increasingly marked during the course of the two 
centuries following. Poems were made, more frequently 
than ever before, in honor of the Virgin. From their 



NEW INFLUENCES 147 

foundation, at the very end of the eleventh century, the 
Cistercians showed peculiar devotion to the cult. The 
institutes of the general chapter held in 1134 provided 
that all the monasteries of the order should be dedicated 
to the Blessed Mary; and all their seals bore her image. 
The movement gathered force as it went, until at the end 
of the twelfth century the cult became, we are safe in 
saying, the focal point of worship. To the Virgin the 
hearts of all believers were lifted most naturally in prayer; 
about her name gathered a host of miracles of grace and 
help. In the thirteenth century, when such writings 
reached their highest development, the Mary legend was 
the centre of all legends. 

The increasing mysticism of the time favored the 
movement. Though fostered by great men like St. Ber- 
nard, it was really a product of the same forces that made 
the leaders of the Church what they were. Men sought 
escape from the world or plunged into the pleasures of 
the world, according to their temperaments, with equal 
earnestness. For good or for evil they were greatly alive. 
The cult of the Virgin was a rival to the cult of beauty 
that came in with the age of romance. It represented a 
reaction against the worship of idealized womanhood: it 
was the Church against the world. Truly there was no 
deliberate attempt to substitute the one for the other. 
The two were, to some degree, the result of the same 
tendencies; and they were frequently united, or con- 
founded, in the minds of their followers. Yet though they 
started from the same impulses, they looked in different 



148 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

directions, the one towards the glorification of the unseen 
power of God, the other towards the glorification of His 
visible works. 

The Mary legends themselves gave a loose rein to 
imagination and emotion. They were a stimulus to re- 
ligious feeling, the effect of which can scarcely be ex- 
aggerated. Though they augmented the tendency to 
hysteria that was undoubtedly present in the thirteenth 
century, they were just as clearly, in their best form, a 
help to godliness. Along with the religious emotionalism 
went a tenderness that was uplifting and, like the similar 
quality in the knightly ideal, civilizing. Consider the 
legend of St. Edmund of Canterbury, recounted in the 
contemporary life by Matthew Paris. While a youth, Ed- 
mund plighted his troth to Mary before her image in the 
church and in the presence of his confessor. "And then 
he suddenly rose up, and placed a ring (which he had 
procured for this purpose) on the finger of the statue, and 
fitted it on, saying, 'To thee, O most pure Virgin of vir- 
gins, Mother of my Lord Jesus Christ, I vow, promise, 
and consecrate, the gift of my virginity. With this ring I 
plight thee my troth, and gratefully adopt thee for my 
lady and spouse.' . . . And after his prayer, when he 
wished to pluck off the ring which he had placed on the 
finger of the statue, lest it might be the cause of wonder- 
ment to the people, he was not able to do so, though he 
tried in every way he could." It matters little whether 
the story represents any real spiritual experience of the 
young saint, or is only an ancient tale in a new setting; 



NEW INFLUENCES 149 

the effect upon legend readers would be the same, and 
altogether for good, one must believe. 

Mary legends were, of course, as much a symptom as 
an influence. They indicated the excitement of the 
period, which found expression in a hundred ways. Poli- 
tics was to the great ecclesiastical and secular rulers an 
eager struggle; learning was to scholars a pursuit of des- 
perate importance; men of all conditions plunged east- 
ward to defend the Holy Sepulchre, wave after wave of 
them, never counting the cost. However misdirected may 
have been some of the enthusiasms of the later Middle 
Ages, there is no hint of somnolence in those centuries. 
Within the Church itself, Citeaux, the Grande Chartreuse, 
Cluny, and Clairvaux are names that indicate the pre- 
vailing impulse to righteousness; and throughout the 
thirteenth century the orders of Dominic and Francis 
stirred the flame. To all these movements Mary legends 
are an index. 

Their degeneration shows the less pleasing aspect of 
mediaeval life, for it again is characteristic. While the 
tendency to gather marvels about the figure of Mary was 
yet in full swing, many stories of a most unedifying char- 
acter were so turned as to celebrate her power. They did 
her no honor and disgraced their makers. The vast col- 
lections of legendary anecdote in praise of the Virgin, 
which were put together between the twelfth and fifteenth 
centuries, both in Latin and in the vernacular literatures, 
contain very much that is sordid, a good deal that is 
frivolous, and not a little that seems to us immoral and 



150 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

blasphemous. Tales of this kind came from a variety of 
sources, but were chiefly of popular origin; they sprang 
from the same root as the fabliaux; they exposed the 
stratum of grossness that underlay the spiritual aspiration 
of the period. 

I For better and for worse the cult and legends of Mary 
influenced profoundly the writing of saints' lives from 
the twelfth century onwards. Legends in Middle Eng- 
lish, which took their color from those in Latin and Anglo- 
French, can hardly be understood without reference to 
the movement just described. Both the great collections, 
which are next to be considered, and the individual 
legends, through which the general course of the type 
can best be followed between 1100 and the Reformation, 
are different from the corresponding works in pre-Con- 
quest England to the same degree that manners, ideas, 
and aspirations differed. And the most important single 
factor in the change was the cult of the Virgin. 




CHAPTER VI 

THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION. I 

LEGENDARIES, AND SAINTS' LIVES IN WORKS OF 
HISTORY AND EDIFICATION 

|j]E have seen how iElfric, for the nurture of the 
people, made three books in English, nar- 
rating according to the order of the calendar 
the lives of many saints. We have seen that 
the same tendency to collect legends into series was opera- 
tive among the Anglo-Normans, who set the literary 
fashions for England, in large measure, during the later 
Middle Ages. In no way, perhaps, can we so well ap- 
preciate the extent to which saints' lives were cultivated 
and the part they played in the literature of the time as 
by a survey of various collections in the English tongue 
which were current between the thirteenth and the late 
fifteenth centuries. They reveal an interest in the type 
that outran the power of expression, for the most part, 
but an interest so strong that an understanding of it is 
essential to a correct estimate of the temper, religious, 
social, and literary, of that interesting age. To the con- 
sideration of these series should be added a review of the 
saints' lives that are imbedded in the chief works of his- 
tory and of general edification that were written in the 
vernacular during the same period. 
k The earliest collection in Middle English is that com- 



152 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

monly known to scholars as the South-English Legendary, 
though the title is a purely modern designation. The 
work is a composite of such an elaborate nature that it has 
baffled the few attempts yet made to unravel the history 
of its compilation. It is preserved to us in no less than 
twenty-nine different manuscripts, sixteen of which con- 
tain (or once contained) complete series of legends. There 
is so much variation, moreover, not only in the order but 
in the actual content of the manuscripts that it is difficult 
to determine just what saints were treated by the orig- 
inal compiler and what he intended the scope of the work 
to be. The difficulty is increased by the fact that the 
oldest manuscript preserved (Laud 108, in the Bodleian 
Library) gives the legends without any attempt to put 
them in an orderly array. On this account, Dr. Horst- 
mann, the learned editor of this version, took it to rep- 
resent the original state of the legendary before comple- 
tion, a rough draft of materials before any arrangement 
had been decided upon. This does not seem to me a cor- 
rect statement of the case. The Laud MS., though so 
early, by no means represents fairly the original text, 
according to Dr. Horstmann's own admission. Prob- 
ably it is nothing more than a random selection of lives 
from the original compilation, and of more value as show- 
ing what the legendary included before the end of the 
thirteenth century than what it excluded. 

As the Laud text is the only one yet edited in its 
entirety, the student must make out the scope and 
arrangement of the work from tables of contents and 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 153 

individual legends that have been printed, and from 
an examination of the manuscripts in English libraries. 
Until several more texts have been edited, it will, as a 
matter of fact, be impossible for scholars to reach very 
satisfactory conclusions about the genesis and the grad- 
ual enlargement of the book. What can be said with some 
degree of certainty is that in southern England, during 
the latter part of the thirteenth century, a writer (or per- 
haps a group of monks) undertook to versify a series of 
saints' lives according to the calendar order of the ec- 
clesiastical year. In the words of the Laud prologue: — 

Though I may not tell of all, I shall tell of some, 
As every feast after other in the year doth come. 

The language of the better early manuscripts, like Har- 
leian 2277 in the British Museum, points to southwestern 
England as the region where the collection originated; 
and the double use of certain passages in the Legendary 
and in the chronicle that bears the name of Robert of 
Gloucester makes it appear that the Abbey of Gloucester 
was the place of its beginning. To the vexing question of 
the priority of Legendary or chronicle I must return. 

At the moment, it is more important to notice the 
metrical form and the content of the earlier versions of 
the Legendary. The legends are written in rhyming 
couplets, prevailingly with seven stresses to a line, like 
those I have just quoted in modernized form. The scribe 
of one important manuscript, however, tried to shorten 
the verse to six beats, naturally without conspicuous 



154 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

success. His attempt illustrates the freedom with which 
the work was handled by various scribes and helps to ex- 
plain the complexities of its structure. The normal line of 
seven beats was probably an adaptation of Old English 
verse, with the substitution of end-rhyme for alliteration. 
It has a suppleness and a fluency that the older verse 
for the most part lacks, but it is not comparable in dig- 
nity and poetic beauty with the medium employed by 
the pre-Conquest writers. It cannot be said, moreover, 
that the makers of the Legendary had a mastery of lan- 
guage sufficient to give their rhythmical effects any great 
importance as poetry. The excellences of what they 
accomplished lie in other directions, as we shall see. 

The purpose of the compilation in its first state is 
clearly indicated by the prologue from which I have al- 
ready quoted: it was intended for reading in conventual 
refectories, as well as privately by persons desiring to 
combine pleasure with spiritual profit. I have stated in 
the previous chapter that legends and romances in verse 
served much the same ends and, to some extent, much 
the same audience. As romances tended to gather into 
cycles, and as several of them, even when unrelated in 
subject-matter, were often written in a single manuscript, 
so it was natural for prosperous abbeys to desire a series 
of saints' lives in convenient and accessible form. Patrons 
of letters, no doubt, sometimes wished such a collection 
for their own use, that they might at any time read or be 
read to concerning the life of the saint whose day it hap- 
pened to be. The assumption that the compilation which 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 155 

we are considering was ever used to replace sermons in 
the churches on the festivals of the saints seems to me 
quite baseless, though the statement has been frequently 
made that it was so used. With regard to the present 
work, the author of the prologue appears virtually to con- 
tradict the view. "All this book is made," he says, "of 
holy days and of holy men's lives ... of whose lives 
when their feasts fall, men read in holy church." He 
amalgamates, furthermore, with his prologue a brief ac- 
count of St. Fabian, which could not possibly have been 
read instead of a sermon because of its excessive brevity. 
Other lives, on the contrary, are related at such great 
length that their use in church would be inconceivable. 
A homiletic discourse must, after all, be limited in length. 
As a matter of fact, the purpose of any legendary has to 
be determined by its characteristics; and this South- 
English collection was clearly intended for conventual 
and private use. 

The work in its original form, if I am not mistaken in 
my inferences, consisted of between ninety and a hundred 
legends, beginning with the celebrations of the Circum- 
cision and Epiphany and ending with the festival of St. 
Thomas of Canterbury on December 31. It included lives 
of the most celebrated Celtic and Anglo-Saxon saints; 
but about five-sixths of the entries are for days observed 
throughout the Catholic world, whether of saints or of 
high feasts like the Annunciation and the Assumption 
of the Virgin. Because of the variety of the contents and 
the individual treatment of the stories, it is impossible to 



156 ' SAINTS' LEGENDS 

believe the work to be anything but an original com- 
pilation from a number of different sources. At the same 
time, any well-stocked monastic library might easily have 
furnished the materials for the book. On this score, there 
is no reason to suppose that more than one man was con- 
cerned in translating and arranging the earliest version of 
the work. 

The contents are varied by the inclusion of certain pas- 
sages that have nothing whatever to do with the saints, 
but serve to give instruction in a palatable form. Thus 
the Life of Kenelm, the ninth century boy-king and mar- 
tyr of Mercia, contains an elaborate description of the 
political divisions of England; and the account of St. 
Michael's contests with the devil leads the writer into 
a very long cosmology similar to the works entitled De 
Natura Rerum by Isidore of Seville and Bede. Occa- 
sionally, as in the case of All Saints' and All Souls', a 
familiar homiletic strain enters, though the discourse 
nowhere takes a homiletic form. Two passages from 
All Souls 9 Day I shall quote in a rather free translation to 
show the bludgeon-like directness of the work when it 
touches abuses, and to show also the free and easy move- 
ment of the verse at its best. The writer has been saying 
that penance should be measured according to the sin. 
He goes on: — 

Therefore should one bethink him, 
And to a foolish priest trust not, or penance wildly laid. 
Forsooth, or here or elsewhere, each sin shall be repaid. 
What? How is then of Janekin and of Robinet the wild, 
Of Annot and of Malekin who wish the priest so mild? 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 157 

And they say: "This priest is hard. God shield us! Have no fear! 

We '11 go to seek Sir Gilbert priest. He never is severe, 

And he will shrive us easily; our sins shall be forgiven." 

By God, when they have done it all, home they go unshriven. 

Again, after discussing the question of the celebration of 
, mass by a wicked priest, he says : — 

But though the mass be none the worse, by my neck, the priest 
That sings it thus in deadly sin shall dearly pay, at least! 
For when Sir Gilbert ends the mass, his life will he so dight 
To be in taverns all the day and with his quean at night. 
He says, when any calls him priest: "Sit still, my comrades, fie! 
The priest is hanging in the church; but here, just now, am I." 
His surplice or perhaps his cope he calls the priest, you see, 
But he shall leave his cope at home, when he goes to hell, parde! 

Such terse phrasing is not the rule throughout the 
Legendary, one has to admit; yet I am unable to detect 
any variation in manner and style sufficient to indicate 
a difference in authorship, as far, that is to say, as the 
texts common to the older manuscripts are concerned. 
Whether one man or several men made the original com- 
pilation, the work must have been done in a monastery. 
The extracts just given show clearly enough the author's 
lack of sympathy with the secular clergy, while monastic 
abuses are never scored. The variety of sources that must 
have been used again points to a conventual library. The 
method of narration and the style, as far as they have 
individuality at all, tend to confirm my belief that the 
legends were translated and collected for the use of 
monks and of laymen who desired a profitable and equally 
interesting substitute for the current romances of ad- 



158 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

venture. Emphasis is laid where one would expect in such 
circumstances. Thus the story of St. Thomas Becket, the 
militant hero of the English Church, is told with greater 
fulness of detail than any other, running to nearly two 
thousand and five hundred verses. It is, moreover, per- 
haps rather more successful than any of the other lives. 
Again, the marvellous voyage of St. Brendan and the 
Purgatory of St. Patrick, both of which can vie with 
romances in the elements of popular interest, receive 
liberal treatment in the matter of space. The sensational 
adventures attributed to the apostles John and Thomas, 
the gruesome history of St. Clement, no less than the ap- 
pealing biographies of Francis of Assisi and Edmund of 
Canterbury, are related at great length. Indeed, the 
treatment of these romantic stories shows considerable 
skill. Though the style is without dignity or what we call 
distinction, the movement of events is rapid and seldom 
clogged or obscure. The use of detail, furthermore, is 
picturesque, just as it is in the better romances. The dull 
parts of the Legendary are those in which the writer has 
summarized the lives of saints very briefly. 

The likeness to romances is increased by the conver- 
sations with which the legends are plentifully strewn. 
Quite in the accepted manner of romances is the parleying: 
the swift exchange of rather formal speech, the courteous 
or excessively discourteous use of epithets of address. 
The last point is one to be noticed in connection with the 
authorship of the work: a marked mannerism of style in 
the legends that arc common to the earlier manuscripts 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 159 

is the use of French phrases of salutation or exclamation. 
"Beau sire," "beau frere," "dieu merci," and such cur- 
rent coin of language occur over and over again, along 
with similar English phrases. This does not indicate, to 
my mind, a French source for the Legendary, but merely 
a tendency on the part of the writer to ape the manner 
of secular fiction. 

The question as to the relationship between the Leg- 
endary and the chronicle popularly known as Robert of 
Gloucester's, although a difficult one, as I have already 
remarked, is of the utmost importance in connection with 
the baffling problem of the authorship of the legends. 
The chronicle, it should be said at the outset, seems to 
have been the work of at least three men. Originally it 
must have ended with the reign of Henry I, but it was 
continued by two different men in two different ways to 
the year 1271. The first of these continuators called 
himself Robert. Further than the facts that he was an 
eye-witness of the battle of Evesham in 1265 and was ob- 
viously well acquainted with the topography of Glouces- 
tershire, we know nothing whatever about him. He 
could not have written earlier than 1297, since he referred 
to Louis IX as having been canonized. The date of the 
third writer we have no good means of determining, but 
we may suppose that he lived early in the fourteenth 
century. Apparently a certain number of interpolations 
were afterwards made in the earlier part of the chronicle 
by still another scribe. 

Now, as before stated, there are several passages in the 



160 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

chronicle that correspond, line for line, to similar pas- 
sages in the Legendary. There are only ten saints, let me 
say, of whom more than cursory mention is made in the 
chronicle. In the case of eight of them, as far as the texts 
yet edited permit one to judge, there is more or less paral- 
lelism to the accounts in the Legendary. Altogether, there 
are at least thirteen passages of significance to the prob- 
lem. Three of these, adduced by the editor of Robert of 
Gloucester, I cannot control further than to say that Mr. 
Aldis Wright seems to have used the late manuscript of 
the Legendary in the library of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, in working out his sources, though he does not 
name it. There he would have found lives of Athelwold 
and Alphege, as well as perhaps a longer text of Dunstan 
than those yet printed. From all three of these he cites 
parallels. Though I have been unable to consult the 
Trinity MS., the fact that it is late tends rather to con- 
firm than to contradict the inferences that I have drawn 
from the other ten passages. It would be out of place for 
me here to present the evidence in detail. Briefly stated, 
the situation is this : the description of Britain in the life 
of St. Kenelm; two lines in the life of St. Wulstan about 
events during the Norman Conquest; a couplet in the 
life of St. Swithin, giving the date of his translation ; and 
lines giving the date of St. Dunstan's birth and an ac- 
count of his recall to power by King Edgar appear to have 
been taken bodily from the earlier version of the chronicle. 
On the other hand, it is impossible to believe that the 
chronicler did not make use of the Legendary in his ac- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 161 

counts of St. Thomas of Canterbury and of St. Kenelm's 
death. The reason for this apparent contradiction be- 
comes clear, however, when we notice that the two latter 
passages are found in the portions of the chronicle written 
by the continuators. From the parallels between the life 
of St. Edward Martyr and the account of him in the 
chronicle I can draw no conclusion save that they may 
have a common source. Each omits many verses found 
in the other, though they have fifty-two lines in common. 

If my interpretation of the evidence be correct, we have 
this state of affairs : the chronicle was first written, down 
through the reign of Henry I; certain passages from it 
were then used by the compiler of the Legendary ; and 
later at least two lives from the latter work were pillaged 
by continuators of the chronicle. Furthermore, since we 
know that the second chronicler, who called himself Rob- 
ert, wrote about the year 1300, we can date the earliest 
form of the Legendary more accurately than it has been 
possible to do up to the present. Dr. Horstmann's guess, 
often repeated by other scholars, that it was composed in 
the last quarter of the thirteenth century may be ac- 
cepted, with the caution, merely, that we cannot yet be 
sure of the terminus a quo. I regret that I am unable to 
find any clear evidence as to whether one man or several 
were concerned in compiling the Legendary as it stood at 
first; and I do not feel prepared even to express an opinion 
as to whether the chronicler and any legend-writer were 
one. 

The compiling of the Legendary did not, as a matter of 



162 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

fact, end its history. No one of the many manuscripts to 
which I have referred agrees altogether in content with 
any other. The freedom with which scribes inserted 
legends, only taking care, usually, that they should be 
written in what might pass for the same metre, is a testi- 
mony to the extreme popularity of the collection. Who 
translated these lives we do not know, and we have no 
means of knowing. Sometimes, as in the case of Mary 
Magdalene in the oldest extant manuscript and of the As- 
sumption of the Virgin in one of the youngest manuscripts, 
we find that an older poem has been incorporated into the 
series. The Assumption, indeed, was given a new form to 
make it fit into the collection. In other instances, legends 
in other than the prevailing metre have been interpolated 
or appended without any attempt to change their form.. 
Again, eleven of the manuscripts contain only fragments of 
the work, which have been taken out of their setting and 
copied into manuscripts with other legends or with poems 
of quite a different character. Some of the later manu- 
scripts, moreover, as well as the earliest of all, do not give 
the legends in calendar order, but present them quite 
without system. Altogether, no more tangled skein of 
relationship was ever accomplished by the tampering of 
scribes, even when they had to do with a work of edifica- 
tion. The obvious conclusions to be drawn from this are 
that the scribes had no sense of literary property and that 
they enjoyed the contents of the book. It would seem 
that everyone who had a new copy of it made must have 
had it arranged according to his own predilections. If one 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 163 

is tempted to say that the worth of the compilation as 
literature is measured by the ease with which new legends 
were inserted among the old, let it be remembered that 
the additions are, generally speaking, less vigorous than 
those lives which we must regard as forming part of the 
original collection. It was easy enough to write a legend 
that followed the general metrical scheme. Great literary 
merit the work does not possess, in its best estate, but it 
is less contemptible, both in form and substance, than 
much of the ephemeral writing that the boasted enlight- 
enment of our own day finds tolerable. The continuous 
popularity of the book is attested by its growth down into 
the fifteenth century: as long, that is, as the language of 
it could be read without difficulty. 

One aspect of the work must be mentioned in con- 
clusion. All, or nearly all, the manuscripts have sections 
devoted to the movable and immovable feasts of the 
Church year. These vary, however, both in number, 
length, and position. Sometimes the story of Advent is 
found expanded until it includes not only a Life of Our 
Lady and the Processus Prophetarum but the whole Old 
Testament history; sometimes the Passion is appended 
to a Life of Christ. In some of the manuscripts the appro- 
priate readings for the high festivals are given their place 
according to the calendar, but in the majority they pre- 
cede the lives of saints, forming a more or less complete 
temporale which corresponds to the sanctorale. In one man- 
uscript they stand thus as a separate section of the work, 
and in another they are found by themselves, without the 



164 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

legends. Whether or not a temporale formed part of 
the original plan for the book cannot be determined until 
these poems have been printed in their entirety and sub- 
jected to close study. My impression is that they were 
gradually added by one and another writer and that they 
were placed in a section by themselves only when they 
grew to the size of a separate book. The fact that the 
manuscript which contains the temporale by itself is the 
only one with a complete set of the poems seems to point 
in that direction. 

Of a less complicated development in some respects 
than the great compilation just discussed, but with no 
fewer difficulties in others, is the North- English Homily 
Collection. Though it survives in fewer manuscripts than 
the southern series, it must have been, we must believe 
from the intricacies of their relationship, scarcely less 
popular. Evidence of this popularity is afforded by the 
fact that one of the extant manuscripts was written in 
the South by a scribe who turned the whole book into 
the speech of that region. Three distinct recensions of the 
work have been traced; and the later ones differ so much 
from the original that they may almost be regarded as 
independent books. Originally, as is shown by the name 
which I have applied to it, it was not intended to be a 
collection of saints' lives at all, but a work of edification 
"of cristes dedes and his sau." The Latin title in one of 
the best manuscripts, which may be translated Sunday 
Gospels for the Whole Year expounded in the Vulgar 
Tongue, is excellently descriptive, if cumbersome. The 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 165 

author's intention, as he himself states it in his prologue, 
is plain : — 

Forthi tha godspells that always 
Er red in kirc on Sundays, 
Opon inglis wil ic undo. 

To this end he adopted the method of treatment that had 
become by the thirteenth century the stereotyped form 
for sermonizing, very largely through the influence of the 
preaching Friars. He made a free paraphrase of the 
stated passage from the Gospels; he gave an exposition 
of its meaning according to the analogical fashion of the 
day; and he told a story by way of illustration, some- 
times a very elaborate story. All this he cast in jogging 
couplets with four beats to the line, like the verses just 
quoted. 

He wrote explicitly for the unlearned, though not ex- 
clusively for them. In the prologue he said: "For un- 
learned men have more need to hear God's word than clerks 
who look in their Mirror and see in books how they shall 
live. And both the clerk and the unlearned man, born in 
England and long dwelling therein, can understand Eng- 
lish; but all men cannot, certainly, understand Latin and 
French." No more than the South-English Legendary was 
the work intended, unless I misunderstand the prologue, 
to be read in church, Sunday by Sunday. "For namely 
on the Sunday come unlearned men to the church to say 
their prayers and to learn spiritual knowledge, which they 
hear there. For as great need have they to understand 
what the Gospel means as have learned men. . . . There- 



166 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

fore I will show in English and make our unlearned 
brother know what all the Gospels say that fall to the 
Sundays." The writer meant, I think, to supplement and 
not to supersede ordinary sermons by his versified homi- 
lies. As is the case with the southern legends, the length 
of some of the discourses (several of them run to more 
than a thousand lines) makes it impossible for me to 
believe that they were intended for reading at mass. 

The varying length of the homilies was largely due to 
the tendency of the narrative to overbalance the other 
parts of the discourse. It would seem that the maker not 
only regarded the stories as likely to interest his audience, 
but himself came to feel a disproportionate interest in 
them. He drew upon the Bible for some of his tales, and 
at least seven he took from the Vitce Patrum; others he 
found in some collection of Mary legends; but in nine 
cases he recounted either complete lives of saints or inci- 
dents from such lives. The collection thus gathered was 
a miscellaneous assortment of stories, some of them only 
vaguely illustrative of the texts for the Sundays in ques- 
tion, yet it gave the reader a very representative selec- 
tion of mediaeval narrative. The subjects and the quali- 
ties are all there, though turned to the uses of practical 
piety: adventures, laughable incidents, quests for the 
unattainable. If some of the stories, to the modern reader, 
seem ill calculated to serve the end in view, it must be 
remembered that they were chosen for other palates 
than his, and for other ways of thinking. The author 
selected what would captivate his audience, whether by 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 167 

way of conveying somewhat crudely the notion of spirit- 
ual aspiration or by depicting right and wrong. Like 
Mliric before him, he found narrative more likely to 
serve his purpose than exposition pure and simple. 

He had a model for his work. In the preceding chapter 
I have referred to the Miroir or Evangiles des Domees by 
Robert de Gretham, which was written about the middle 
of the thirteenth century. Not only do the titles and 
general plans of the two books correspond, but there are 
various passages throughout that are markedly similar. 
Perhaps it would be unwise to argue from the reference 
in the prologue of the English work to "clerks who look 
in their Mirror and see in books how they shall live" 
that the writer knew this particular Miroir. " Speculum" 
was not an uncommon mediaeval title. Taken in con- 
nection with other evidence, however, the reference may 
not be without value. The evidence from similarity of 
plan and from what seems to be adaptation of individual 
passages I have space to summarize only briefly. Both 
collections began with the first Sunday in Advent and 
ran through the twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. 
Although there is considerable variation among the 
manuscripts of the two works as to the order of the 
homilies and as to the texts for particular Sundays, they 
have a common peculiarity in the gospel they assign to 
the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, which accords with the 
uses neither of Sarum nor of York. Furthermore, a dozen 
homilies in each collection are developed in the same way, 
either as a whole or in part. As far as they run parallel, 



168 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the one set might well be a paraphrase of the other. In 
at least five cases the correspondences are so close, idea 
by idea and line by line, that it is impossible for me to 
believe that the English author did not have the French 
text before him while he wrote. There is even, occasion- 
ally, a verbal resemblance that is striking. Though it 
will be difficult, until all the manuscripts of both works 
have been edited and can be submitted to a minute 
comparison, to decide just how far the dependence of the 
English work on Robert de Gretham goes, my own in- 
vestigation of the texts makes me ready to assert that 
the Miroir had been read, at least, by the compiler of 
the English homilies. So much seems to me assured by 
the evidence at command. With regard to the stories, 
which have a far greater importance in the English than 
in the French work, the former seems to have cut loose 
from the latter and to have taken entirely different 
material. I consider, it will be seen, Robert de Gretham's 
Miroir as being a model rather than a source for the 
northern collection of homilies : a model followed or de- 
parted from at the discretion of the compiler. 

The preceding discussion naturally leads one to inquire 
when, where, and by whom the original recension of the 
North-English Homily Collection was made. Answers to 
these questions can be given with a varying degree of 
probability, though none can be answered with absolute 
certainty. About the authorship, as a matter of fact, we 
really possess no clue that can be trusted. The scribes of 
two or three manuscripts have indicated their names 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 169 

(Johannes Smyth, for example !) ; but they have been less 
careful to preserve the name of the compiler. It is, how- 
ever, an interesting coincidence, at least, that at the end 
of the collection in one manuscript (Cambridge Univ. 
Library Dd. I. 1) appears "quod R. Staundone," while 
in another (Phillipps 8122) is written "nomen scriptoris 
R.S." Since the two manuscripts are something like 
fifty years apart in date and in different dialects, they 
could not have been the work of a single scribe. One is 
tempted, therefore, to regard some R. Staundone as the 
original maker of the collection, though the evidence is 
very far from satisfactory. Neither Robert Manny ng 
of Brunne nor Richard Rolle of Hampole, to whom the 
work has at one time or another been ascribed, can pos- 
sibly have been the writer. It is safest to say that for 
the present the book must be classed among the anony- 
mous productions of the age. That the author was a 
cleric is most probable, but there can be no certainty 
whether he was a monk or a secular priest. 

With regard to the part of England where the collec- 
tion was made, there is more evidence. Dr. Horstmann 
called attention to divergences in the gospels, assigned to 
various Sundays, from the uses of Rome and of Sarum. 
He therefore assumed that the homilies were composed 
in the diocese of Durham. If it be added that the order- 
ing of the Sunday texts differs from the use of York, we 
may with propriety concur in this opinion. The variation 
is found in the case of four different Sundays, though it 
should be said that the arrangement of the manuscripts 



170 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

seems to indicate a certain amount of confusion in the 
minds of the scribes. All the manuscripts containing the 
original collection, save one, are, as a matter of fact, in 
the dialect of the North, which confirms the evidence 
from arrangement. To be sure, we have no manuscript 
that does not show corruption through the independence 
and carelessness of copyists; but we can be certain from 
the rhymes that the work was composed not very far to 
the south of the Scottish border. At what particular 
place it was made we have no means of knowing. The 
compiler must have had access to a monastic library of 
some size, for he eked out the "poverty" of mind, which 
he mentions in the prologue, by the use of a good many 
books as sources of his tales; but he might have found 
them in any one of several establishments in the North. 
As to when he wrote, I am inclined to believe that the 
date customarily assigned is somewhat too early. It has 
been argued from the supposed date of the earliest and 
best manuscript, which is unfortunately only a fragment, 
that the collection must have been made originally at the 
end of the thirteenth century. This manuscript (Royal 
College of Physicians, Edinburgh, Ch. 5. 21) has been 
antedated to the early fourteenth century, whereas a 
comparison of its hand with that of manuscripts, the 
dates of which are known with certainty, shows that it 
could not have been written till late in that century. 
Though we ought to allow for the lapse of a considerable 
period to account for the changes that had clearly been 
made in the text, even of this early manuscript, there is no 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 171 

reason to suppose on this score that the work was com- 
piled until the early part of the fourteenth century. 
Moreover, the language of the author, as far as it can be 
determined from an examination of the rhymes, does not 
make it necessary for us to place him as early as the 
thirteenth century, though it scarcely warrants a dog- 
matic statement that he wrote in the fourteenth. An- 
other criterion for the date is furnished by the fact that 
some seven stories seem to have been taken by the com- 
piler from William de Wadington's Manuel des Pechiez, 
a work of edification composed in England during the 
latter half of the thirteenth century. A translation of this 
by Robert Mannyng of Brunne, entitled Handlyng Synne, 
was undertaken, as we know from Robert's explicit state- 
ment, in the year 1303. A comparison of certain tales, 
which appear in all three works, makes it clear that our 
author borrowed from William rather than from Robert, 
and it seems probable that the French work would have 
been drawn upon for our homilies at about the same time 
it was made the basis of a free translation. Robert and 
our author, according to their own words, wrote for a 
similar public and with the same purpose: they were 
moved, though in different sections of England, by the 
same impulse. All in all, it is safe to regard the North- 
English Homily Collection as a product of the earlier four- 
teenth century. 

I have spoken of the author's tendency to expand the 
narrative parts of these homilies out of all proportion to 
the expository sections. That readers were likewise more 



172 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

interested in the legends and exempla than in the ser- 
monizing proper is shown by one manuscript (Harleian 
2391), which contains the tales of the original collection 
without the gospel paraphrases and the expositions. - 
Along this line, moreover, was formed one of the two 
later recensions of the work, which not only included lives 
of saints but transformed the book into a true legendary. 
The extant manuscripts of the original compilation show 
that the change was inevitable : some of the best of them 
have sermons for St. John the Baptist's Day and for the 
feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. From this to the addition 
of a proprium sanctorum or a legendary in the same metre 
was but a step; and the addition was twice attempted 
during the fourteenth century, once by a southern and 
once by a northern writer, though there seems to be no 
way to discover just when or where these redactors did 
their work. 

One of the recensions thus made is found in the famous 
Vernon MS., owned by the Bodleian Library, which con- 
tains also an important text of the South-English Legend- 
ary, a metrical translation of seven lives from the Le- 
genda Aurea, and a series of Mary legends. A copy of this 
enlarged redaction is extant in a manuscript in the Brit- 
ish Museum; but it has not been discovered elsewhere. 
We cannot attribute the changes and additions of the 
new version to the scribe of the Vernon MS., because he 
copied the South-English Legendary also in an enlarged 
form. Before this scribe made his great thesaurus of 
legends towards the end of the fourteenth century, there- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 173 

fore, some southerner had transformed the North-English 
Homily Collection not merely by turning it into another 
dialect but by adding a large number of homilies for week 
days and saints' days throughout the year, and by arrang- 
ing the whole in two parts. In the first he included nearly 
all the legends and contes devots of the original collection, 
and also put in several new stories, notably for the feast 
of Corpus Christi. The second part he made a pro- 
prium sanctorum with homilies appropriate to the cele- 
bration of thirty -four different days. The saints for 
whose days he wrote sermons in this part were all well- 
known figures to the Church at large; and no legends in 
the strict sense of the word are included. Perhaps, as 
Dr. Horstmann has suggested, the copyist of the Vernon 
MS. considered it unnecessary to give the lives of the 
saints in question, since he had already transcribed those 
of the South-English Legendary. He may, accordingly, 
have had before him a version of the work that was far 
more truly a legendary than the one transmitted by him 
to us. I may add that the introduction to the second part 
is in strophic form and was probably engrafted here be- 
cause it fulfilled the purposes of the redactor. 

The other new recension was likewise made in the 
fourteenth century^ but in the North rather than the 
South. Although it is preserved in two manuscripts only, 
the complication of their mutual relationship seems to 
indicate a wider popularity for this particular enlarge- 
ment of the collection than would be implied by its 
meagre representation in modern libraries. The scribe 



174 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

of one of the manuscripts, for example, rearranged the 
first twenty-four homilies of the series according to the 
historical sequence of their scriptural texts. The other 
manuscript was written by two different copyists, the 
second of whom must have followed a text strikingly 
like that used by the scribe of the first manuscript. As in 
the southern redaction, the work is much enlarged and 
is divided into two parts. First comes a temporale mod- 
elled on the original collection but much altered in form 
and in substance. Not only are homilies added for even 
more week days than is the case with the Vernon recen- 
sion, but new homilies are sometimes substituted out- 
right for the old. In general, the writer had a tendency 
to stress the gospel paraphrases and to restrict the explan- 
atory and homiletic passages; and he omitted more than 
half of the narratives originally contained in the work. 
Thus he made the new temporale something like a collec- 
tion of gospel stories. Curiously enough, considering the 
nature of the second part of the newly arranged work, one 
of the manuscripts has interpolated among the homilies 
for Sundays four lives of saints, three of which {Stephen 
the Proto-martyr, John the Evangelist, and Thomas of 
Canterbury) do not appear in the other manuscript. The 
second part is, indeed, a legendary in the proper sense 
of the word. It contains, in its completer form, twenty- 
eight poems appropriate to feast-days of the Church, 
though a few of these are rather explanations of festivals 
than stories of saints. Very incomplete the new legendary 
is as compared with the one from Gloucestershire. It 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 175 

contains no lives of native saints, and never strays out 
of the beaten track of the most commonplace hagiog- 
raphy. It could have served no purpose beyond giving 
its readers a chance to peruse, at various seasons of the 
year, legends suitable to the greater feasts; it remained 
an appendage of the temporale, just as in the southern 
collection the temporale was always an appendage of the 
legendary. Such as they were, without much distinction 
either in substance or in style, the legends seem to have 
been the work of at least two writers, whose dialects 
were not precisely the same. 

With regard to the North-English Homily Collection in 
its three recensions and its multifarious variations of 
detail, it must be said that many questions of origin and 
development still remain unsolved. Such great liberties 
were taken with its arrangement and its contents that 
almost every manuscript may be regarded as a new 
redaction. Were there a steady growth from the begin- 
ning to the end of its history, there would be less diffi- 
culty in disentangling the stages by which it developed; 
but the exclusions of the various manuscripts are as 
mysterious as the inclusions. Scribes seem to have put 
into it whatever was convenient and to have left out 
whatever they wished. They sometimes inserted, for 
example, a northern Passion of Our Lord, which was 
obviously an independent poem at first. They had no 
consistent plan. As far as any tendency is discoverable 
in the entire development, it is to transform a collection 
of sermons into a collection of stories. But the various 



176 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

authors, translators, and copyists, whose combined work 
made up the amorphous whole, had as slight regard for 
systematic construction as they had for literary fame. 
They were merely desirous, as far as one can see, of 
giving the unlettered some of the privileges of the 
learned, and some of the incidental delights. 

The author of the original compilation had more sense 
of narrative values, it seems to me, as well as more 
vigor of expression, than any of his continuators. He 
had fluency; he knew how to concentrate attention on 
the points of a story that would most interest his readers; 
he possessed a gift for thrusting home a moral with a 
homely phrase. He could give a satiric picture of actual 
conditions in a few words, and he used unconventional 
language with good effect in trying to make his readers 
understand and feel what he had at heart. The legends 
that he retold have neither loftiness of thought nor 
beauty of expression, but they represent the reaction of 
common minds upon ecclesiastical traditions beloved 
alike by high and low, the ignorant and the learned. 
In this way they have their value for the history both of 
legends and of literature at large. 

About the year 1400, or perhaps slightly earlier, a 
third important legendary in verse was produced, to 
match those originating in Gloucestershire and Durham. 
This was made north of the Forth, and is known to 
modern scholars as the Scottish Leg end Collection. The 
compiler did not give his name, though he wrote with 
some freedom about his personal history. He was, he 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 177 

said in his preface, a "mynistere of haly kirke" who 
could no longer do his work on account of great age and 
feebleness. In several other passages he spoke similarly 
of his condition. At the beginning of the legend of £2. 
Julian, for example, he told of his frequent travels as a 
young man to get wisdom, and how on these journeys the 
travellers were accustomed to say a pater nosier to the 
patron of the road whenever they came in sight of an 
inn. Altogether, he stamped his work with the impression 
of simple-minded piety and of sufficient though not ex- 
traordinary learning. He was not without experience in 
writing when he began his legendary, since he had already 
translated, in his old age, "some part" of the story of 
Christ and the Virgin. From his cursory sketch of this' 
book, which is not known to survive, it appears that he 
had in reality written a complete account of Jesus and 
His Mother, beginning with the birth of the Virgin, ending 
with the Assumption, and including all the events of the 
Incarnation and the Passion. To this he had appended a 
series of sixty-six miracles, the largest collection of Mary 
legends, as far as we know, that ever existed in English. 
From what original he translated we cannot tell, but 
only that he had made the completest temporale of the sort 
found in the South-English Legendary of which we have 
any record in English. All this he had accomplished, in 
his own phrase, "to eschew idleness." 

After making the work just mentioned, which must 
have been of very considerable length, the author wished 
to write, if not prevented by "eld and fault of sight," of 



178 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the twelve apostles. That done, he was apparently led 
to make the legendary as a whole, which contains more 
than 33,000 lines in short rhyming couplets. At least, 
though the more recent editor of the collection has ex- 
pressed doubts as to whether it was completed by the 
old man who wrote of the twelve apostles, there is nothing 
in language or style to indicate diversity of authorship. 
The feat of making a paraphrase of such length in sim- 
ple metre is not, it must be remarked, too extraordinary 
for belief, even though the writer was enfeebled by age. 
Industry and application, together with a certain facility 
of expression in verse, were the sole requisites. The dif- 
ferences in literary value of the individual legends were 
due, pretty clearly, to the materials with which the au- 
thor worked. Though his statement that he was merely 
a translator was too modest, since he paraphrased always 
and frequently adapted, he cannot be credited with 
poetical creation. 

He was formerly identified with John Barbour, the 
Scottish contemporary of Chaucer, who died as Arch- 
deacon of Aberdeen and wrote the Bruce, a vigorous 
national epic, and has had ascribed to him also a long 
poem on the Trojan War. It has been shown, however, 
that the legend- writer could not have been Barbour: 
differences of dialect as well as of verse make it impossi- 
ble, while the evidence for the identification was never 
well founded. We must be content, it appears, to let him 
remain anonymous and to be grateful for such indica- 
tions as to his personality as he gave us. For myself, 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 179 

though I have said that the legendary as a whole was 
apparently the work of a single hand, I do not feel sure 
that some of the lives may not have been added by a 
near contemporary and neighbor of the original author. 
The fact that we possess only a single manuscript of the 
book, and clearly not the original manuscript, increases 
the difficulty of deciding the matter. The question re- 
mains open because it has to be decided, if at all, by 
means of literary criticism, which is very far from an 
infallible guide as to authorship. My personal impression, 
based on the style of the stories and the prevailing tend- 
ency to begin each of them with a longer or shorter 
introduction in a subjective manner, is that the legendary 
was completed in virtually its present form by one man. 
As I have said, I believe that the varying interest of 
the legends and the apparently unequal narrative skill 
displayed by the writer, were due to the sources. Cer- 
tainly they are not sufficient to be the foundation of any 
argument for diversity of authorship. 

The order in which the legends are arranged is of con- 
siderable interest, since it differs markedly from that of 
the two collections previously considered. Whether or no 
the writer at first intended to do more than make a his- 
tory of the apostles as an appendix to his series of poems 
on Christ and the Virgin, the completed series of lives 
shows a plan that might well have been in the compiler's 
mind from the start. -Like the collections of lives in 
French prose that were circulated in England, it has the 
hierarchical order. To the legends of the twelve apostles 



180 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

succeed those of Mark and Luke as representatives of the 
evangelists. Lives of Mary Magdalene and Martha, with 
emphasis on their supposed apostolate in France, then 
follow; and Mary Magdalene seemingly suggested Mary 
of Egypt, whose romantic story comes next. Thereafter 
four martyrs of the early church are celebrated, and as 
many more confessors. From this point the order be- 
comes confused, though it is apparent in several cases 
that similarities between the characteristics or careers of 
saints account for their juxtaposition. Towards the end 
a plan can once more be discerned in two groups, one of 
four martyrs and one of ten virgins, with the latter of 
which the series of fifty legends closes. Though it is not 
to be supposed, as we shall see, that the maker of the 
legendary used any one of the collections in French prose 
as a source, it seems likely that he was influenced by 
them in his choice of a plan for the book. Even though 
all the contents are not arranged in orderly fashion ac- 
cording to the "degrees" of sainthood, they are not put 
in quite at haphazard. 

A theory of Dr. Horstmann's, who first edited the 
collection, that the writer originally ended the series with 
the legend of Barnabas, made a new ending with St. 
Machor (number 27), stopped again with St. Ninian 
(number 40), and finally added the sequence of the ten 
virgins, has the color of probability. Certainly the posi- 
tion of the legends of St. Machor and St. Ninian makes 
one believe that they were respectively intended to stand 
last in the collection. Not only are these the only British 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 181 

saints in the entire list, but two considerable passages in 
their lives are identical. It would seem that the maker 
of the book not only had fears of being unable, on account 
of his age, to complete his work, but was economical of 
materials that could be made to serve a double purpose. 
Though we cannot be sure that the one manuscript 
extant preserves the original order of the legends in every 
particular, the fact of its having just fifty lives seems to 
indicate that it contains the entire series. Furthermore, 
the round number tends to persuade one that the work 
was planned and executed by a single writer. 

The collection was not a compilation from various 
sources to the same extent as the two earlier English 
legend books. Such close parallels have been noted be- 
tween a large majority of the lives and the most famous 
mediaeval repository of legends and exempla, the Legenda 
Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine, that this must be re- 
garded as the primary source. In introducing the legend 
of St. Blasius, indeed, the writer expressly acknowledged 
his indebtedness. "I found about him in the Golden 
Legend, both the beginning and the end, as I shall here 
undo for you, without any addition set thereto." Else- 
where he did not refer to the work by name, though he 
had the quite customary habit of mentioning a "book" 
as the source of his information. As to what books he 
used, aside from the Legenda Aurea, I cannot speak with 
much confidence, since the subject has not yet been 
properly investigated. Indirectly at least, he drew upon 
the Vitce Patrum; but since he sometimes referred to 



182 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

this when he was clearly depending on the Legenda Aurea, 
his references have little value. Dr. Horstmann sug- 
gested that the Speculum Historiale by Vincent of Beau- 
vais, which formed part of the great encyclopaedia of 
the later Middle Ages, furnished the author with much 
of his information. This, however, cannot be regarded 
as proved. For the two Scottish saints whose legends 
were given, the sources were clearly independent Latin 
lives: that of St. Ninian probably being the biography 
by Ailred of Bievaulx. Although I feel some doubt as 
to whether the author used quite as much liberty in 
handling his materials, by way of interpolating and com- 
bining, as Dr. Horstmann would have us believe, it is 
evident that he often inserted general observations of 
his own aside from those that he put into the introduc- 
tions and conclusions of the various legends. Every- 
where he paraphrased, as I have said, rather than trans- 
lated. 

The work has been called a production of more literary 
value than the two earlier Middle English legendaries, 
but not with much justice. Greater sophistication it 
does have, which gives it a specious air of distinction. 
There are more frequent references to the Church 
Fathers; there is a closer approximation to the manner 
of Latin legends. Without making any parade of learn- 
ing, for he was evidently a simple-hearted and modest 
person, the author conveyed the impression of scholarly 
tastes and of seclusion. He had his mind fixed, I should 
say, less on the public for which he was writing and more 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 183 

on the legends themselves than the makers of the English 
collections. Though he must have written for a similar 
unlearned public, he impresses the modern reader with 
the truthfulness of his statement that he did his work in 
order to avoid idleness. There is comparatively little 
homiletic application and almost no effort to write down 
to the level of the laity. The author seems to have been 
one of those quiet and industrious priests of scholarly 
tendency who have dignified the ranks of the parish 
clergy in all times, men who have been neither self- 
seeking nor always effective, but useful none the less. 

In spite of the limited praise that can be given the 
legendary for its literary qualities, there would be no 
point in denying that many of the lives are narrated with 
very considerable skill. Even granting, as I think we 
must, that the better stories were paraphrased from origi- 
nals less bald and stereotyped than the sources of the 
poorer legends, it is still true that a writer devoid of lit- 
erary ability might have spoiled the admirable accounts 
of Mary of Egypt and Eugenia. Not only do such 
legends as these show the power of phrasing incident 
effectively, but they display a genuine feeling that ele- 
vates the verse at times to the level of imaginative poe- 
try. Though the author had no greater skill in telling 
a story than the earlier writers whom I have mentioned, 
and did not possess the gift of some of them for pungent 
satire, he alone perhaps could have penned the lyrical 
address to the Virgin incorporated in the Mary of Egypt. 
These fifty-four lines, with some other passages of sim- 



184 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

ilar quality, relieve the work from barrenness and give 
it occasional touches of romantic charm. 

Not long after the compilation of the work just de- 
scribed, John Mirk, a member of the Augustinian canonry 
of Lilleshul in Shropshire, made a collection of homilies 
in prose, which he called the Festial. We know nothing 
about him except that he wrote also a treatise in verse, 
the character of which is explained by its title, Instruc- 
tions for Parish Priests. The date of his Festial is assured 
by the fact that at least one of the manuscripts states 
with reference to St. Wenefred that her day "is not 
ordeynyd by holy churche to be halowid," whereas an- 
other and later manuscript remarks : " which day is now 
ordeynet to be halowet." As the day was thus digni- 
fied in 1415, it is obvious that the book must have been 
written before that year. 

The title indicates the general scope of the work, which 
contains brief sermons for most of the chief festivals of 
Christ and the Virgin, and also for many of the celebra- 
tions in honor of the saints. The homilies are arranged in 
the order of the calendar, beginning with the first Sun- 
day in Advent, just as is the case with the North-English 
Homily Collection. They are not based, however, on the 
gospels appointed for particular days, and they contain 
little exhortation or biblical paraphrase. For the most 
part they explain why such and such a day was honored 
and how or when the celebration was appointed; beyond 
that they are devoted to the narration of stories. The 
homilies for saints' days usually contain very little save 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 185 

accounts of the saints, together with one or more miracles. 
Sometimes they have summaries of acts and passions, 
sometimes stories of translations, sometimes detached in- 
cidents illustrative of the saints' careers. They are never 
very long. Otherwise, especially for the regular festivals 
of the liturgical year, they give exempla, sometimes drawn 
from the lives of the saints and sometimes not. Alto- 
gether, the Festial includes one of the largest collections 
of anecdotes, Mary legends, conies devots, and legendary 
stories of all sorts that was ever made in English. The 
work embraces in its complete form about seventy-five 
homilies or legends, but the total number of narratives is 
far greater than this, as several stories are often given for 
the same day. 

Only three English saints are included in the list of 
those whose days are honored. It is significant of the 
place accorded St. Thomas of Canterbury as late as the 
fifteenth century that Mirk gave narratives not only for 
his day but also for the date of his translation. The other 
two native saints were evidently put in for local reasons. 
St. Alkmund, a ninth century Northumbrian king, was 
patron of Mirk's own church, and as such naturally 
honored by the author, while the centre of the cult of 
St. Wenefred was Holywell, not far over the border into 
Wales from Lilleshul. Various other British saints are 
mentioned by way of anecdotal reference, of course, and 
many tales of wonder from English sources are intro- 
duced. None the less, it is as true of the Festial as of the 
Scottish legendary in verse that the saints celebrated are 



186 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

almost all saints of the early Church who were in no way 
connected with the west of Europe. It would be unfair to 
draw any deduction from this as to the native cults of 
England, save that in the ordinary parish church only 
the greater saints, together with some few of local fame, 
were specifically honored. 

This deduction as to parish churches can be made 
with safety because John Mirk, as his prologue definitely 
says, made the Festial to give priests the information 
they needed for the instruction of the people about the 
great feasts of the year. He had felt from his own lack 
of learning the difficulty experienced by parish priests, 
through want of books and "simpleness of letters," in 
teaching their flocks. Accordingly he drew from the 
Legenda Aurea " with more adding to" what was needful 
for the parson "to teach and for others to learn" with 
reference to the high festivals of the year. As a matter 
of fact, though his chief source was the Legenda Aurea, 
he put in a good deal of information from other books 
and arranged the whole according to his own liking. 
Frequently he mentioned the Gesta Romanorum as the 
book on which he was drawing; and famous names like 
Gregory, Bernard, John Beleth (who wrote in the twelfth 
century a Summa de Divinis Officiis), and Alexander 
Neckam were used to give authority to statements or to 
stories. One must remember, of course, that to John 
Mirk, as to most mediaeval writers, an authority quoted 
at second hand was as good as any other, and that many 
of his references were taken from Jacobus de Voragine. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 187 

Yet he paraphrased very freely and, like Sir Thomas 
Malory, "reduced" stories to convenient compass. He 
was not a translator but a compiler. 

The Festiql has no literary graces and makes no literary 
pretensions. It is an interesting work, not because Mirk 
told stories well but because he told so many stories. 
As a compendium of legend and anecdote it makes ex- 
ceedingly good reading at the present day for anyone 
who likes the bare essentials of plot and has sufficient 
imagination to envisage detail for himself. It must have 
been exceedingly useful, as well as interesting, to the 
parish priest who wished to piece out his imperfections 
of learning and of illustration by means of a single book. 
Quite evidently it was found serviceable, for at least 
fourteen more or less complete manuscripts of the work 
are known to exist, while eighteen editions of it were 
printed between 1483 and 1532. The manuscripts con- 
tain a varying number of homilies, which shows that 
the book was subjected to the customary scribal tam- 
pering. Additions were made, as well as necessary trans- 
criptions into other than the Shropshire dialect of the 
author. 

The most marked change made, however, was one of 
order. One manuscript (Harleian 2391), which contains 
also the narratives of the North-English Homily Collec- 
tion, rearranges the homilies in two divisions, a temporale 
and a sanctorale. This was the order followed by Caxton, 
who printed the first edition, as well as by subsequent 
editors. It is interesting to note that the work was three 



188 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

times printed in France before the end of the fifteenth 
century, once at Paris and twice at Rouen. The other 
editions were all from London and Westminster, save 
that the second was printed at Oxford in 1486. For more 
than a century Mirk's Festial thus enjoyed a popularity 
that it merited by its convenience as a work of reference, 
though not by its worth as literature. Like many another 
book of greater pretensions and of more solid value, it was 
overwhelmed by the Protestant Reformation, which did 
its best to bury the Middle Ages more completely than 
the ancient world had ever been buried. From this point 
of view the reformers were the new barbarians. 

Of a different character from the collections hitherto 
described, and addressed to a different class of readers, 
was a series of thirteen lives of women saints by an 
Austin friar named Osbern Bokenam. The author was, 
according to his own admission, a follower of Lydgate 
and Capgrave; and he may properly be regarded as being 
of the Chaucerian school, which thus had an influence on 
the movement that I have been tracing. Though a some- 
what crabbed poet, Osbern was a poet still. Of an invin- 
cible personal modesty, and convinced that the great 
poetical harvest had already been reaped by his prede- 
cessors, he yet regarded himself, quite clearly, as being 
in the tradition of the muses. His own words from his 
prologue to the life of St. Agnes, or rather the words ad- 
dressed to him by Pallas, are worth quoting to show the 
spirit in which he undertook his task. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 189 

Thou commyst to late, for gadyrd up be 
The most fresh flourys by personys thre — 
Of wych tweyne han fynysshyd here fate, 
But the thrydde hath Atropos yet in cherte — 
As Gower, Chauncer, and Joon Lytgate. 

It will be seen that Chaucer's influence had affected the 
legend-maker's point of view and, not altogether hap- 
pily, his style. 

Nothing is more significant of this changed attitude, 
which under happier political conditions might have 
made English literature flower in the fifteenth century as 
it did a hundred years later, than the fact that Osbern 
Bokenam gave us abundant information about his own 
life. He was obscure even in his own day; he was learned 
rather than gifted; he was conscious of his own unim- 
portance; yet he found it natural to show who he was 
and why he wrote. He was able, besides, to make legends 
in a pious spirit and yet to refer as frequently to Plato 
and Ovid as to Augustine and Jerome. He was personal, 
just as he was classical, because he expressed the temper 
of his age. 

Osbern Bokenam was born about 1393 and during the 
period of his literary activity, at least, was a member of 
the Augustinian house at Stokclare in Suffolk. He had, 
as we shall see, learned and noble friends ; and he himself 
was a scholar. He travelled also. We learn that in 1438 
he was in Venice and that in 1445, before beginning his 
legend of Mary Magdalene, he went on pilgrimage to the 
shrine of St. James at Compostella in Spain. Moreover, 



190 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

he speaks in the prologue to Margaret of the last time he 
was in Italy, quite with the casual ease of the maker of 
many journeys. He wrote four different books, certainly, 
while there is some reason for supposing that a Dialogue 
betwix a Seculer and Frere was from his pen. Of the works 
known to be his, a collection of legends, presumably in 
prose, came first. No copy of this has been found, how- 
ever; and our information about it comes solely through 
Osbern's description at the beginning of his second work, 
the Mappula Anglioe. He speaks there of "the englische 
boke," which he has " compiled of Legenda Aurea and 
of other famous legendes at the instaunce of my specialle 
frendis and for edificacioun and comfort of alle tho the 
whiche shuld redene hit or here hit," and mentions lives 
" of Seynt Cedde, Seynt Felix, Seynt Edwarde, Seynt Os- 
walde, and many other seynt is of Englond." This col- 
lection could not have been the extant translation of the 
Legenda Aurea, for that does not contain lives of the 
English saints whom he cites. One can only hope that 
some manuscript of what must have been a highly inter- 
esting series of legends may yet be discovered. The 
Mappula Anglice is a description of England translated 
from Higden's Polychronicon, and can be dated as having 
been written before 1445, since a treatise on reckoning 
time, which follows it in the only surviving manuscript, 
was copied by the same scribe in that year. In the Map- 
pula Anglioe the author twice gives his name. In the 
epilogue he says that the capital letters at the beginning 
of the chapters "expressyn the compilatours name"; and 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 191 

they spell, in point of fact, " Osbernus Bokenham." In 
a Latin distich at the end, moreover, his Christian name 
appears. At some time before he began his extant col- 
lection of legends, he made, so he tells us, a Latin poem 
in ballade rhyme concerning the daughters of St. Anne. 
Of this no trace has been discovered. Last of all he 
wrote his series of lives of women saints. 

This is preserved in a single manuscript, written at 
Cambridge in 1447 for Thomas Burgh, an Austin friar 
to whom Osbern had dedicated the first of the legends. 
The table of contents at the end of the manuscript gives 
this information, together with the author's name and 
the facts that he was a doctor of divinity, that he resided 
at Stokclare, and that the expense of copying the book 
was thirty shillings. The saints' legends included in the 
collection were the following : Margaret, Anna, Christina, 
Ursula, Faith, Agnes, Dorothy, Mary Magdalene, Catharine 
of Alexandria, Cecilia, Agatha, Lucy, and Elizabeth. Osbern 
began the first of them on September 7, 1443, as he stated 
with particularity. By 1445 he had written seven others, 
while the remaining five must have been completed soon 
after, since the manuscript containing them was copied, 
as I have said, in 1447. Such exactitude of information is 
unusual, even about a modern book; and it is interesting 
to know, further, that Osbern wrote his legend of Catha- 
rine in five days. Seven of the lives he dedicated to 
friends or patrons: a fact that throws light not only on 
his connections but on the conditions of poetical produc- 
tion in the fifteenth century. Aside from the Margaret, 



192 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

to which I have already referred, he inscribed three 
legends to ladies who bore the names, respectively, of 
Catharine, Agatha, and Elizabeth, while the Mary Mag- 
dalene he wrote at the request of Lady Bowsere, Com- 
tesse d'Eu, a sister of Richard of York. The patronage 
of the Elizabeth was only less aristocratic, as a matter of 
fact, than this last, for it was presented to Elizabeth 
Vere, Countess of Oxford. With reference to two of the 
six lives that were not dedicated, Osbern explained his 
choice of subjects : he wrote about Faith because he was 
born on her day, and about Cecilia because "long ago" 
he had taken her together with St. Faith and St. Barbara 
"to his valentines." 

He used various metres for the legends: the four-beat 
rhyming couplet, and stanzaic forms of seven, eight, and 
sixteen lines. His favorite, however, seems to have been 
the rhyme royal, a metre loved by Chaucer and emi- 
nently suitable for narratives in verse. For his materials 
he drew, like John Mirk, on the Legenda Aurea, — 

not wurde for wurde, for that ne may be, 
In no translacyoun, after Jeromys decre, 
But fro sentence to sentence I dar wele seyn, 
I hym have folwyde evene by and by. 

Though he had a different text of the Legenda Aurea from 
the one which has been printed by the modern editor of 
that work, and apparently used other books for a few of 
the lives, the truth of his statement has been shown by 
recent study of the sources. He gave, in general, as faith- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 193 

ful a rendering of his originals as was consistent with his 
purpose, which was not only devotional but literary. 

As a poet and story-teller, Osbern is an interesting 
figure, though he had no great talent. He was a learned 
and simple-minded man who dearly loved to intersperse 
his tales with references to the Muses; with subtleties like 
his references in the prologue of Margaret to the cause 
efficient, the cause material, the cause formal, and the 
cause final; with disquisitions on medicine such as the 
one in which he gravely discussed the nature of the flux 
that afflicted St. Lucy's mother; or with recollections of 
his travels. He expressly and with iteration disclaimed 
all desire to compete as a poet with great men, dead or 
living; his wish was only to write plainly in "Suthfolk 
speche." In this he was not altogether successful, for his 
language was sometimes more than a little rough-hewn. 
Yet his verse flows smoothly, as a rule, except for the 
obnoxious prevalence of words of Latin derivation, espe- 
cially in rhyme, which was a besetting sin of the writers 
who followed Lydgate. He recounted his stories with 
directness and simplicity, indeed; he gave them rapid 
movement; he could impart a dramatic quality to dia- 
logue. Such virtues as these, taken along with the gentle 
fancy and the sense of humor that crop out in his verse, 
make him pleasant to read, even though he was only a 
second-rate versifier. The playful modesty and the happy 
humor of the man are well illustrated in the prologue to 
Margaret, when he bids his friend Thomas Burgh conceal 
his authorship wherever cavillers may be present : — 



194. SAINTS' LEGENDS 

and principally 
At hoom at Caunbrygge, in your hows, 
Where wyttys be manye ryht capcyows 
And subtyl; wych sone my lewydnesse 
Shuld aspye. Wherfore, of jentylnesse, 
Kepyth it as cloos as ye best kan 
A lytyl whyle; and not-for-than 
If ye algate shul it owth lete go, 
Be not aknowe whom it comyth fro, 
But seyth, as ye doon undyrstand, 
It was you sent owt of Agelond 
From a frend of yourys that usyth to selle '■■ 
Goode hors at feyrys, and doth dwelle 
A lytyl fro the Castel of Bolyngbrok 
In a good town, wher ye fyrst tok 
The name of Thomas, and clepyd is Borgh 
In al that cuntre evene thorgh and thorgh. 
And thus ye shul me weel excuse 
And make that men shul not muse 
To have of me ony suspicyoun. 

Of less interest than Osbern's book, perhaps, are the 
translations of the Legenda Aurea that were made in the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though one of them has 
very considerable merit and much historical importance. 
Two renderings of this famous work, the most celebrated 
collection of saints' lives from the thirteenth century- 
forwards, are known to me. The first is a mere frag- 
ment of seven lives in verse, preserved only in the Vernon 
manuscript, the remarkable thesaurus of legends already 
described. Indeed, it appears certain that these seven 
poems are rather random excerpts from the Legenda 
Aurea than the remains of a complete translation. They 
are not arranged in the order of the original, and give no 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 195 

evidence of having been selected for any definite reason. 
Their subjects are Paula, Ambrose, a "certain virgin in 
Antioch," Theodora, Bernard, Augustine, and Savinian 
and Savina. They were versified in the short rhyming 
couplets so popular with writers of narrative, and were 
made in southern England about the middle of the four- 
teenth century. 

The later translation was complete: a prose rendering 
made with freedom but with sufficient accuracy. It was 
finished in 1438, and was perhaps the work of more than 
one writer, though of this we cannot be sure. There is 
significance as to the audience for whom the translation 
was made in the fact that one of the best extant manu- 
scripts was bequeathed in 1460 by " John Burton, citysen 
and mercer of London," to his daughter and, after her 
decease, to "the prioresse and the covent of Halywelle 
for evermore." The translator (or translators), it should 
be stated, followed the order and the text of the French 
version by Jean de Vignay rather than the Latin, though 
there are slight differences in content between the French 
and English translations which can be explained only on 
the hypothesis that the Latin was used as final authority. 
One manuscript (Trinity College, Dublin, 319) contains 
a series of twenty of the lives, 1 which have been copied 
down quite without reference to the original order of the 
book. Although both the beginning and the ending of this 

1 My thanks are due to Miss E. M. Overend, of Dublin, who very 
kindly verified the contents of this manuscript for me and copied speci- 
mens of the text, thus enabling me to identify it. 



196 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

manuscript are now wanting, it is clear that the scribe 
made large drafts on the collection without feeling bound 
to arrange the legends except according to his own whim. 
In 1483 William Caxton printed the complete translation, 
though his edition varies from the text of the manuscripts 
in many particulars. In making his book, Caxton re-ar- 
ranged the contents; he frequently changed the wording; 
he added more than seventy lives, some of them from the 
appendix of the Legenda Aurea and others from French 
and native sources; and he inserted the celebrated ety- 
mologies of saints' names, which had been left out of the 
English translation in its earlier state. Indeed, he used 
so much liberty that he made the book virtually a new 
treasury of legends, only embodying a famous collection 
as the chief of its constituent parts. 

This rendering of the Legenda Aurea, both in its earlier 
and later stages, represents the best tradition of prose 
translation in the fifteenth century. It may be said to 
stand in somewhat the same relation to saints' lives as Le 
Morte Darthur stands to romances. Many of the qualities 
that distinguish Malory's work are present in this: the 
fashion in which it was put together as a compendium, 
the spirit which informs it, and even the style in which it 
is written. It has neither had, to be sure, nor deserved, the 
continuous success of the Morte Darthur ; but it has not 
deserved the oblivion that has overtaken it. In language 
it stands similarly between the old and the new. The un- 
dulations of its prose should please many readers of to- 
day, just as Malory's readers find delight in his style. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 197 

Caxton, it will be noticed, was working on the two books 
at about the same time: he printed the legends in 1483, 
the romances in 1485. He was, it would appear, appre- 
ciative of the charms of each. 

In the second decade of the sixteenth century, another 
famous Latin legendary was epitomized and translated 
into English as The Kalendre of the newe Legende of Eng- 
lande. It was printed by Richard Pynson in 1516. Of 
itself it would call for comment only as perhaps the last 
collection of saints' lives in the vernacular that was made 
before the Reformation; but as the latest form of a work, 
the life of which extended through two hundred years, 
it deserves special mention. In the second quarter of 
the fourteenth century, an industrious compiler, John of 
Tynemouth, had completed a great Sanctilogium Anglioe, 
which was by all odds the most complete collection of 
the lives of saints in any way connected with Great 
Britain and Ireland that had ever been attempted. Ap- 
parently he had labored over his task for many years and 
garnered his materials in many places, though he seems 
chiefly to have used the great library of St. Albans both 
for his Sanctilogium and for his Historia Aurea. The 
former work contained the lives of one hundred and fifty- 
six saints, excerpted, abridged, or compiled, as well as 
even more tales of various kinds that illustrated these 
and other legends. The lives were arranged in the order 
of the calendar. In the course of the fifteenth century 
this collection was re-arranged in alphabetical order, en- 
larged by the insertion of many narrationes, and given 



198 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

a new title: De Sanctis Anglioe. This revision may pos- 
sibly have been made by John Capgrave, a learned 
Augustinian who wrote both in Latin and in English. 
Although there is no proof that he had a hand in revising 
the legendary, his name has been more commonly asso- 
ciated with it than that of its original compiler. Again, 
early in the sixteenth century, the work was revised, and 
enlarged by the addition of fifteen new lives. In this form 
it was known as Nova Legenda Angliw, and printed by 
Wynkyn de Worde in 1516, the same year in which the 
English epitome was published. 

This long and varied history was not merited by the 
literary quality of the work, for it had not even preten- 
sions to value of that sort; but the completeness of the 
collection which it preserved and the vast though un- 
critical erudition which it embodied gave it genuine 
worth. Indeed, it is indispensable to the hagiologist who 
is interested in the lives of British saints, concerning 
some of whom we have no other record. In its abridged 
English form it has less importance, naturally, since that 
was intended but to whet the reader's appetite for the 
complete work. The translation indicates, none the less, 
that the demand for collections of saints' lives in the 
vernacular had not spent itself as the Reformation 
approached. 

Three books of instruction and edification, two from 
the fourteenth century and the third from the fifteenth, 
one an original compilation and the other two transla- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 199 

tions, may serve to complete the illustrations drawn from 
collections of legends as to the importance of the genre 
during the later Middle Ages. 

Of portentous length and of facile, if very crude, work- 
manship, Cursor Mundi gave its readers a sketch of 
sacred history from the creation to the establishment of 
the Christian Church, the whole arranged according to 
the seven ages of the world. It was written in the short 
rhyming couplets used in two of the legendaries already 
discussed. Of its origin nothing is known, except that 
it was made in the North about the beginning of the 
fourteenth century. Though the book has little distinc- 
tion, save of purpose, the reader is sometimes startled 
by an apt phrase that seems out of place among its dull 
fellows. The author's aim, however, was sufficiently 
magnificent. 

All this werld, ar this boke bline, 
Wid cristes help i sal our-rine, 
And telle sum ieste principals 

With a scheme of composition so wide as this, he nat- 
urally gathered into his work many legendary stories. 
Thus he incorporated in his narrative the entire his- 
tory of the cross from the mission of Seth to Paradise 
for the oil of mercy to the finding of the rood by St. 
Helena. The passages which he took from this tale of 
marvels he scattered through his book in proper chron- 
ological sequence. As Professor Napier showed long 
since, he took the material for his version from two 
sources: a popular Latin prose Legend of the Cross-Wood 



200 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

and an Old French poem on the same subject, portions of 
which he translated almost line for line. Similarly he 
drew on an Old French poem by Wace, L 'Etablissement 
de la fete de la conception Notre-Dame for elaborate ac- 
counts of the conception of the Virgin and the beginning 
of the festival in celebration of it. The ever popular Gos- 
pel of Pseudo- Matthew and Gospel of Nicodemus furnished 
him with stories of the childhood of Jesus and the har- 
rowing of Hell, while from a work by Isidore of Seville, 
De Vita et Morte Sanctorum, he took a complete series 
of romantic narratives dealing with the apocryphal acts 
of the apostles. Furthermore he incorporated with his 
work a poem on the Assumption of Mary, which had 
been made in the South in the latter part of the previous 
century. It will be seen that the author of Cursor 
Mundi was very far from being content with purely 
scriptural incident. Like all historians of the Middle 
Ages, he was, perforce, a legend-writer also. 

In the translation of William de Wadington's Manuel 
des Pechiez, made by Robert Mannyng of Brunne and 
quaintly entitled Handlyng Synne, to which reference has 
already been made, we find the same conditions present. 
Though it was designed as a moralizing work, it became 
at the hands of its compiler and translator a collection of 
tales as well. Robert, indeed, expanded the work by the 
insertion of new stories. His version, begun in 1303 as 
he himself recorded, contains a great variety of legendary 
stories aside from exempla that have nothing to do with 
the saints. There are many incidents from the Vit& 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 201 

Patrum and several from the Dialogues of Gregory the 
Great, the Vision of Furseus from Bede, as well as tales 
from the lives of Robert Grosteste, St. Beatrice, St. John 
Almoner, St. Justine, and St. John Chrysostom. More 
gifted than the writer of Cursor Mundi y this Lincolnshire 
man, Robert Mannyng, gave his stories a native flavor 
and a considerable interest in spite of — or perhaps by 
means of — the jogging metre that he used. 

A third repository of legendary tales, translated from 
Latin in the course of the fifteenth century, is entitled 
An Alphabet of Tales. It is a rendering of the Alphabetum 
Narrationum, once ascribed to Etienne de Besangon but 
now supposed to be the work of Arnold of Liege. One of 
the most famous collections of exempla was made accessi- 
ble, through this translation, to English readers. Though 
primarily designed as a store-house from which preachers 
might take illustrations for their sermons, the book has 
more interest than could be expected of an encyclopaedia. 
Either in Latin or in English — for the English rendering 
is fluent — it is eminently readable. The wealth of anec- 
dote from very various sources that it contains has much 
to attract the browsing idler and much to teach the 
serious student. Among books of mediaeval exempla this 
was not the least successful; and such books were at least 
next of kin to the legendaries, since saints figure so largely 
in their pages among philosophers and men of secular life. 

The foregoing review of saints' lives, as they appear in 
legendaries and in a few characteristic works of history 
or edification, has, I hope, shown at least two things: 



202 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the continuous and penetrating interest felt by all classes 
of society in the legends of the Church, and the respon- 
siveness of the legendary type to the prevailing influences 
and tendencies of Middle English literature. The first 
point, indeed, is illustrated to better advantage by these 
collections than by the separate lives that will be dis- 
cussed in the next chapter; the second will be further 
explained, and perhaps better explained, by a study of 
individual legends, which varied in method of treatment 
and in the emphasis laid on one or another element of 
the material, according to the taste of the writer and of 
his public. It will be evident, I think, that to men of the 
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries legends 
were regarded not only as an important branch of lit- 
erature, but as indispensable food for the intellect and 
emotion of all estates. The makers of these books of 
legends discovered no new way of setting forth the sto- 
ries they told, no new fashion of appeal; they followed 
Latin and French models, in general, with circumspec- 
tion if not with servility. The personal adaptation of 
Osbern Bokenam was exceptional. What the collectors 
accomplished was the provision for clergy and people of 
extensive and readable compendiums, which served a 
great variety of purposes. Without being able to write 
great poetry or prose, they gave adequate expression to 
matters that were attractive of themselves both to the 
learned and the simple. The public, clearly, made no 
insistent demand for beauty of form if only the substance 
were at hand. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 203 

The popularity of the legend type during this age is 
shown by a comparison between the collections just de- 
scribed and the romances of the same period. Romances 
in verse and prose were unquestionably vastly liked, and 
the genre was much cultivated. Yet not until the time of 
Malory was a compendium of even one branch of them 
ever made in English. The total number of Middle Eng- 
lish legends, moreover, is considerably greater than the 
total number of romances. Adventure was enhanced, we 
may suppose, when it wore the livery of fact and had the 
warrant of ecclesiastical authority. 




CHAPTER VII 

THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION. II 
THE COURSE OE THE LEGEND 

pHE history of saints' lives during the Middle 
English period was characterized not only by 
the making of collections, which we have 

[(considered in the previous chapter, but by 
the writing of individual legends. Separately composed 
and never included in any thesaurus, except as they were 
sometimes brought together by scribes who gathered 
diverse materials in a single volume, these lives in verse 
and prose are quite as important as the great series. 
They represent, indeed, the best and the worst of legend- 
writing during the period: some of them being works 
admirable for literary quality and biographical interest, 
and others despicable from almost any point of view. 
It will be illuminating for us to trace their course, to 
see how responsive they were to the spirit of the age, 
how representative of its literature. The mediums in 
which they were written and the sources from which they 
sprang must engage our attention. Backward glances, 
meanwhile, at the great collections which we have studied 
will enable us to see the development of the genre as a 
whole during the vigorous and interesting centuries that 
preceded the Reformation. 



? THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 205 

Perhaps the phenomenon that first impresses one when 
reviewing the period is the complete extinction of legend- 
writing in English between the Norman Conquest and the 
end of the twelfth century. As has been noted in the 
chapter on prose legends in Old English, it is sometimes 
hard to see just when the type, as far as English was 
concerned, trailed off into silence. The silence came, none 
the less. Older works were copied, whether in a spirit of 
reaction against the new order, or simply because newer 
works could not be come by, we do not know. The writ- 
ing of Latin legends proceeded, as we have seen, indus- 
triously and even brilliantly; the writing of legends in 
French was established; but the English legend was 
smothered. At least, there is preserved to us no saintly 
biography of the new era, either in English verse or in 
English prose, that can by any possibility be dated before 
the closing years of the twelfth century. 

The eclipse of English literature after the Conquest is 
sufficiently familiar to all of us; it is a commonplace of 
text-books. It has been so much emphasized, indeed, 
that scholars have found it necessary to prove at length 

— and students to learn by the discipline of dull reading 

— the nexus between old and new. It has been needful 
to show that the eclipse did not mean the extinction of the 
English language, or of letters in England. The great 
forms were not forgotten. Thus the legend flourished, in 
reality, as we have seen, although lives of saints were no 
longer written in English. Anglo-Norman authors, who 
wrote freely, had no reason for writing other than their 



206 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

own or the Latin tongue. It is not, then, surprising that 
we have no English legend from the twelfth century save 
a fugitive Vision of St. Paul, though it must be said that 
in the case of no other literary type was the eclipse more 
complete. 

This Vision of St. Paul, indeed, barely falls within the 
limits of our study. It is a prose rendering of that vision 
of the tortures of hell which Paul saw under the personal 
guidance of the Archangel Michael. This vision, which 
was to be several times versified in Middle English — 
known also to Dante, it appears — was translated during 
the second half of the twelfth century, somewhere in 
southwestern England, into smooth if not brilliant prose. 
It is known to us through a single manuscript, where it 
is found imbedded in a group of homilies; and it is sig- 
nificant as a late example of a pre-Conquest fashion. 

When, as the result of forces too complicated for 
analysis here — forces ethnological and social as well as 
political — English began once more to be important as a 
literary medium, lives of saints had swung into a new 
orbit. It would not be quite fair to say that the influence 
of France remained dominant, because the path of liter- 
ature for Englishmen no less than Frenchmen had been 
changed. English and French authors of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries wrote in much the same fashion 
because they were subject to the same influences. They 
split chiefly in the matter of language; for a considerable 
time, at least, the rise of nationality did not otherwise 
greatly affect them. The influence of France had done 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 207 

its work by the thirteenth century : it had made England 
over in the matter of literature as in many other ways. 
Thenceforward there can be traced, but only very grad- 
ually, a progressive separation between the two litera- 
tures, which did not reach its widest until the close of 
the sixteenth century. 

Legends merely followed the course of other genres. 
From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century the relations 
between France and England, whether the countries were 
at peace or at war, remained too intimate for an inde- 
pendent species of the type to develop as one had devel- 
oped in Old English times. Little by little, variations ap- 
peared — national peculiarities cropped out. They were, 
however, comparatively speaking, unimportant. In that 
they soon ran their course and died without producing a 
lasting effect on later literature, they were barren mani- 
festations. Had it not been for the Reformation, another 
account might possibly have to be given of them; but 
the Reformation cut so clean across the history of the 
type as a whole that speculation as to what might have 
been is singularly idle. As far as legends are concerned, 
the Reformation is a fact of quite portentous importance. 

We have seen in an earlier chapter that the thirteenth 
century was the time when the Anglo-Norman legend 
chiefly flourished. It is not remarkable, then, that during 
this time there should have been produced comparatively 
few lives of saints in English. 

At the very beginning of the thirteenth century, or 
possibly some few years before it opened, three legends 



208 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

were written somewhere in the south of England which 
mark the reviving practice. It is perhaps not without 
significance, in view of the cult of woman which by this 
time had become focussed, through passionate devotion, 
on the Mother of the Lord, that these three works should 
be lives of women saints. They were, moreover, the lives 
of three virgins who stood pre-eminently for the ideal of 
chastity : Catharine of Alexandria, Margaret, and Juliana, 
The opinion, held by scholars at one time, that all three 
biographies were the work of one man, the author of the 
Ancren Riwle (or Rule of Nuns), has been discarded; but 
it is reasonable to believe that the same impulse that led 
to the instruction of the three high-born anchoresses in 
the duties and privileges of their lot resulted also in the 
celebration of the three martyrs of the early church. 

As has been shown by Professor Einenkel, the Cathar- 
ine was probably written before the other two works and 
was known to the author of them. The three legends 
bear a marked resemblance to one another, however, in 
content and style as well as in language". The lives of 
Margaret and Juliana had earlier been treated in English; 
but St. Catharine, the most famous of the three, had 
never before been the subject of an English legend. In- 
deed, the story of this militant defender of the faith did 
not become generally known in the West until the tenth 
and eleventh centuries — too late for use by the pre- 
Conquest hagiographers — though it had in the later 
Middle Ages so remarkable a vogue. It furnishes the 
extremest case of a virgin combating, not without inso- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 209 

lence, the powers of evil; and as such it made its appeal. 
One cannot deny that the Middle Ages liked to be hit 
hard on any occasion by the dominant idea. The legends 
of Margaret and Juliana, as well as of Catharine, seem 
to our taste harshly crude; yet they satisfied earlier gen- 
erations, no doubt, by the very characteristics that seem 
to us unfortunate. 

The three early Middle English legends that we are 
considering have no remarkable literary graces. AJ1 three 
are written, indeed, in a curious alliterative prose that 
has been considered by some scholars (without warrant, 
I believe) a form of verse; but this stylistic peculiarity 
is rather an affected mannerism than an instrument of 
art, and does little or nothing to make them acceptable 
narratives. The author of the Catharine curtailed very 
greatly the long harangues and learned allusions that 
ornamented his Latin original, yet he did not altogether 
rescue the story from tedium. His greatest gift lay in 
picturesque turns of descriptive phrase and occasional 
passages of dramatic vividness. He was like a Cynewulf 
to whom had been denied the power of fusing his materials 
into organic unity and of sustaining his glowing vision for 
long at a time. His most successful passage is a picture 
of Paradise, seemingly based on the same Latin text as 
an Old High German poem called Himmel und Helle. 
Had he been able to reach more frequently the height of 
romantic beauty that makes this interpolation memo- 
rable, he would deserve a place between Cynewulf and 
the author of the Pearl. Unhappily his moments of in- 



210 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

spiration were few, though the Catharine, as compared 
with the Margaret and the Juliana, is a work of con- 
siderable merit. Nowhere do the latter rise above com- 
monplace translations of the somewhat commonplace 
Latin passions upon which they were based, and as 
translations they are by no means adequate. Only be- 
cause of their chronological position do they have much 
significance. 

More important in every respect is a much-copied 
poetical life of St. Margaret, Meidan Margerete, which 
was composed in Dorsetshire or the vicinity during the 
first half of the century. The oldest manuscript of the 
work that we possess l does not represent the text in its 
purity: it had already suffered considerably from the 
carelessness of scribes. At the same time, it retains the 
essential characteristics of the poem unimpaired and 
enables one to judge, much better than from the four- 
teenth and fifteenth century copies that have come down 
to us, its vigor and grace. Whether or not the original 
manuscript was a translation from a poem in Old French 
I am as yet unable to say, though I suspect this to have 
been the case. 2 In any event, it depended ultimately, as 
Dr. Krahl showed long since, on the same Latin prose 
version that was the source of the Margaret discussed 
above — the text of Mombritius. It represents the 

1 Printed by Hickes, Thesaurus, i, 224 ff. and after him by Cock- 
ayne, Seinte Marherete (E.E.T.S. 13) pp. 34 ff., and Horstmann, Al- 
tenglische Legenden N. F. pp. 488 ff., from MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. 
14.39, missing from the library from 1863 to 1896. 

2 It was not based on any Anglo-Norman version yet published. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 211 

Latin, however, in quite a different way. The poet 
was not content with translation: he transformed the 
legend in the spirit and style of the romances that were 
beginning to be greatly in vogue. He made of the legend 
a new work, swift of movement, vivid of detail, and yet 
reverent of attitude. The figure of the saint became a 
most appealing one in its maidenly purity and flaming 
audacity. Among the many mediaeval representations of 
the ever popular St. Margaret, none brings out more 
clearly the artistic and spiritual possibilities of the theme. 
The dry light of the Latin passion is flooded with warmth 
by the poet's imaginative conception of the young saint. 
Somewhat more than three hundred lines in monorhymed 
quatrains sufficed him for his picture : adequate in every 
respect to the requirements of the genre at its best. In 
rhythm, in dialogue, and in description the poem recalls 
the better traditional ballads, just as do some of the earlier 
English romances. To that extent it may perhaps be said 
to represent a native modification of Anglo-Norman liter- 
ary fashions. Though the text we possess is marred by 
errors, three detached stanzas may give some notion of 
the qualities of the poem as it left the hand of its maker. 
The first is part of the appeal of the tyrant Olibrius to 
Margaret; the second and third are descriptive of her 
martyrdom. 

Lef on me ant be my wif ! Ful wel the mai spede: 
Auntioge and Asie scaltou hav to mede; 
Ciclatoun ant purpel pal scaltou have to wede; 
Wid alle the metes of my lond ful wel i seal the fede. 



212 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Tho ho com widout the toun ther me ir sculde slo, 
Al siwede hire that ever mitte go. 
The wind bigun to bio wen; the sonne wert al bio; 
Thet folc fel to then erthe, ne wisten ho hire nout tho. 

Michael ant Gabriel ant Raffael, here fere, 
Cherubin ant Serafin, a thousend ther were; 
Mit tapres ant mit sensers to hevene he ir bere, 
To hore loverdes blisse; ho was ym lef ant dere. 

To realize how uneven twas the success of the attempt 
to turn legendary material into the mould of romance, 
it is only necessary to consider, in contrast to Meidan 
Margerete, a St. Eustace written about the middle of the 
century. This poem, in the common tail-rhyme stanza of 
six verses, was also made in southwestern England and 
was probably translated from an Old French version; but 
it has nothing of the charm of the slightly earlier work. 
The events of the story are confused. It lacks even the 
personal names that might give a sense of reality and 
vividness. As far as there is any attempt at painting the 
scenes in the saint's life, they are conventionalized into 
insignificance. A story of romantic possibilities is spoiled 
by the crudity of its presentation; it has been squeezed 
dry of emotion and well-nigh of sense. By such poor 
imitations of the meaner romances the legend could not 
thrive. 

Of a different stamp was an Assumption of Our Lady, 
the oldest form of which seems to have been made in one 
of the middle southern counties not long after 1250. 
The author of this legend, which became immensely 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 213 

popular, did not ape the writers of romance, but appealed 
straightforwardly to the religious sense of his audience. 
Whatever merit the performance possesses is due to the 
simplicity of this appeal. Quite without affectation, it 
rehearses the apocryphal life of the Blessed Virgin after 
the death of Christ and relates with dramatic detail the 
circumstances of her passing from earth to heaven. Pale 
figures move and speak against a background as pallid 
as themselves. The verse is clumsy rather than supple: 
the common four-stressed rhyming pairs show not infre- 
quent use of assonance. The diction is colorless, and too 
often tags fill out the measure. Despite these faults, how- 
ever, the poem has some of the good qualities of early 
religious painting — a similar directness in applying 
means to the given end. Religious instruction and reli- 
gious inspiration, in a spirit of sweet naturalness, were 
the evident purposes of the author. The faintly humor- 
ous touch, by which St. Thomas of India is twitted 
with being a little late on important occasions, marks 
the wholesome tone of naive realism. 

It was, no doubt, this spirit in the narrative rather 
than its absolute literary excellence that gave it wide and 
long-continued popularity. It was incorporated with both 
the southern and the northern legend cycles; it was taken 
over by the author of Cursor Mundi; it was turned, in the 
Midlands, into an independent poem in tail-rhyme stan- 
zas. Indeed, the transformation involved by the change 
from the original metre to the long couplets of the South- 
English Legendary was a considerable one. Since the 



214 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

manuscripts containing the work range in date from the 
end of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, it is evident that for about two hundred years the 
poem was prized throughout the whole of England. In- 
terpretative as it was of the best religious sentiment of 
the age, it merited its continued fame; nor, viewed in this 
light, can it properly be despised by us. 

About the middle of the century, also, must have been 
written the first form of The Harrowing of Hell, the ear- 
liest rendering of any part of the Latin Gospel of Nico- 
demus that was attempted in Middle English. It has the 
further interest of its narrative method, which is semi- 
dramatic. Save for the prologue, the entire action is 
given by speeches definitely assigned to various person- 
ages of the story. On this account it has long been re- 
garded as the earliest specimen of drama in English, and 
has enjoyed, to a corresponding degree, the fame that 
novelty brings. The opinion of scholars has not been 
unanimous, to be sure, about its precise relationship to 
the miracle plays that were to come; but the interest in 
it has been continuous. For my own part, I am unable 
to believe that it should be regarded as a conscious effort 
towards dramatic representation, even of an academic 
sort. That it illustrates, however, the impulse which was 
to make drama a powerful literary agency at the close of 
the Middle Ages I am not inclined to deny. It is more 
valuable from this point of view, indeed, than as a legend, 
since in the latter respect it is merely a reworking of the 
Descensus Christi ad Infernos. In its own day the poem 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 215 

must have won a very considerable popularity. The three 
manuscripts by which it is known to us, none of them 
later than the middle of the fourteenth century, vary so 
widely in the text they present that we must suppose it 
to have been many times copied. These variations make 
it difficult to determine the dialect in which the poem 
was first written; but the rather inadequate evidence that 
we have points to the East Midland district as the home 
of the author. 

From the last quarter of the century, as nearly as it 
can be dated, comes a long poem on the Childhood of 
Jesus, known to us only by a copy in the oldest manu- 
script of the South-English Legendary. It is a work of 
nearly two thousand lines, in short rhyming couplets, 
and recounts an extraordinary number of the adventures 
attributed to Christ by the writers of the apocryphal 
gospels. M. Paul Meyer showed, as long ago as 1889, 
that the English poem was a translation from a thirteenth 
century Enfances Jesus Christy of which two redactions 
are extant. He was wrong, I believe, in thinking that 
the translation was made from the earlier form of the 
two; indeed, it seems to me quite clearly an almost literal 
rendering of the later form, which was made by an Anglo- 
Norman versifier. In any case, the English poem owes 
nothing save its halting verse to the translator from the 
southern counties. The French author, on the other 
hand, appears to have taken his material from two differ- 
ent Latin texts (the Gospel of Pseudo- Matthew and a book 
popular in the thirteenth century, entitled De Infantia 



216 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Salvatoris) ; and the realistic tone in which the fantastic 
miracles are related was certainly due to him. The im- 
portance of the work, as far as England is concerned, lies 
in the fact that it was the first account of incidents in the 
apocryphal life of Christ destined to become deeply im- 
bedded in the consciousness of the people. Of a northern 
Childhood I shall speak below; a recently discovered bal- 
lad, The Bitter Withy, echoes two or three of the events; 
and, more distantly, the chap-book History of Tom Thumb 
shows how one of the stories entered into the imagination 
of the English country-side. 

Certain other thirteenth century legends in verse may 
perhaps best be considered in connection with their ap- 
pearance in a celebrated miscellany known as the Auch- 
inleck Manuscript, which belongs to the Advocates' Li- 
brary of Edinburgh. Into this book there was gathered, 
during the early part of the fourteenth century, a variety 
of works both secular and religious. Among them the 
scribe included eight legends : Gregory, St. Patrick's Pur- 
gatory, Adam and Eve, The Harrowing of Hell, Margaret, 
Catharine, Mary Magdalene, and The Birth of Mary and 
Christ. The Harrowing of Hell has been described above, 
the Margaret is a poor text of the Meidan Margerete 
already described, and The Birth of Mary and Christ is 
from the South-English Legendary. The other poems, 
however, deserve mention as illustrating the various 
kinds of verse legends in vogue at the end of the thir- 
teenth century. 

The Gregory, which is found also in two other manu- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 217 

scripts, tells in simple stanzas of eight four-beat lines, and 
without art, one of the most extraordinary tales ever 
invented. The story connects itself, supposedly, with 
Gregory the Great, though nothing more radically dif- 
ferent from the life of that saint could be imagined than 
this tissue of impossibilities. With its motives of double 
incest, of a key cast into the ocean to be found again in 
the belly of a fish, and of an unwelcome child thrown into 
the sea, there is no lack of sensational incident. The 
English poem, which was translated in the East Midlands 
from a French version of the tale, is a very crude per- 
formance. Although imperfectly preserved to us even in 
the oldest manuscript (Vernon), it is evident that the 
translation was badly done. Very darkly in the English 
form can be seen the well-wrought outlines of the wild 
story, which had been firmly established in popular favor 
by the setting of knightly manners that it exhibited. 
Some traces of the trappings of romance remain, together 
with a sober deference to lofty estate, secular or religious, 
which romance-writers often exhibited. To nothing save 
a taste for extravagant fiction could the legend ever have 
ministered; and indeed, its combination of the theme 
of CEdipus with incidents common to folk-story served, 
after transformation, to enrich the stock of secular ro- 
mance. Professor J. D. Bruce has made this clear. 

St. Patrick's Purgatory, a poem in six-line tail-rhyme 
stanzas, seems to have been composed in the East Mid- 
land district. It was a free rendering — the first, save 
perhaps a version in the South-English Legendary — of 



218 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the remarkable vision of the other world written by 
Henry of Saltrey towards the end of the twelfth century. 
Henry's Latin book, usually known as Tractatus de Pur- 
gatorio, gained immediate popularity and was transcribed 
and adapted with bewildering frequency. Indeed, its 
long history in literature and folk tradition makes it, pos- 
sibly, the most influential vision of the sort except Dante's 
own. The version of the Auchinleck MS. was made by 
a poet of real imaginative attainment. Although he had 
no metrical facility and was sometimes clumsy about 
passing from scene to scene, he had a very real power 
of description. The adventures of the knight Owain 
amidst the torments of Purgatory and the delights of 
the Terrestrial Paradise were told with a vividness and 
a personal grace that make the poem compare not un- 
favorably with the Espurgatoire of Marie de France. The 
unknown poet was a lover of beautiful sound and color, 
and was fond of the catalogues so often successfully used 
by mediaeval writers. A single stanza must suffice to 
show the quality of his verse at its best. 

Fair were her erbers with floures, 
Rose and lili divers coloures, 

Primrol and parvink, 
Mint, fetherfoy, and eglentere, 
Calombin and mo ther were 

Than ani man mai bithenke. 

The Adam and Eve of the Auchinleck MS. is a fragment 
in short rhyming couplets. It is a translation, or rather 
a new arrangement, of material found in the Vita Ada? 
et Evk, which is closely connected with the treatise De 



r THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 219 

Ligno SanctoB Crucis. Both these works were used other- 
wise by English writers in verse and prose. To the 
History of the Holy Rood-Tree reference has already been 
made; and the compilers of Cursor Mundi and the North- 
English Homily Collection also drew upon the legends. 
Later uses of them will be taken up in due course. The 
complicated relationships of all the versions in Latin and 
the vernacular cannot well be summarized briefly. The 
relationships are of less importance to us, at the moment, 
however, than the fact that the poem mentioned above 
attests the continued interest in the story past the Con- 
quest and at the end of the thirteenth century. The frag- 
ment from this period begins with a brief account of the 
fall of man. After narrating Seth's journey to Paradise 
for the oil of mercy, and Adam's death, it succinctly re- 
ports the history of the world to the Deluge. 

Of a very different movement from the poem just dis- 
cussed is the Catharine, the third of the new legends in 
the Auchinleck MS. This poem of ninety-nine eight-line 
stanzas is one of the most successful versions of the legend 
of St. Catharine of Alexandria that has ever been penned. 
By curtailing the long harangues and by narrating the 
events of her trial and martyrdom with breathless vigor, 
the author made of it a most exciting narrative. One 
would think less well of the poem, to be sure, if we were 
dependent for our knowledge of it upon the Auchinleck 
MS. Happily, a better text exists in a manuscript of 
Caius College, Cambridge. The art of this Midland poet 
of the later thirteenth century was an art of haste: at a 



220 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

furious gallop he plunged through the story. Neverthe- 
less, he did no wrong to the heroic elements in the pas- 
sion, but rather intensified them by his headlong style. 
Very much as the author of Havelok the Dane, a popular 
romance of the day, got his effects by rapidity and energy, 
this poet achieved vividness through vigor. The two 
writers, no doubt, had in mind very much the same kind 
of audience. That the English maker of the legend was 
a wholly independent poet, however, seems to me unlikely. 
I have a strong impression, as yet unconfirmed by proof, 
that he was turning an Anglo-Norman version of the 
legend into English, and that some of the merits of the 
work are due to his original. At the same time, there 
would be much to praise, even should this be true. 

Less important than the Catharine in every way is the 
Mary Magdalene of the Auchinleck MS. The loss of the 
opening lines of this pedestrian piece of verse-making 
in rhymed couplets cannot be greatly regretted, for the 
legend has no marked value except in relation to other 
versions of the story from the same general period. One 
of these, the Mary Magdalene which is found in various 
manuscripts of the South-English Legendary, is a poem of 
very considerable merit. It was written farther south in 
the Midlands than the Auchinleck version and in the 
long couplets of the Legendary to which it became at- 
tached. 1 Its date, apparently, was about 1275 or a little 

1 A theory of Horstmann's that it was originally composed in stan- 
zaic form was satisfactorily disposed of by Knork in his Berlin disser- 
tation of 1889. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 221 

earlier. The romantic tale of the Magdalene's apostolate 
in Provence, which for many centuries was regarded as 
sober history, was here related in a fitting style, pictur- 
esque of phrase, rapid of movement. Another version, 
found in one of the expanded forms of the North-English 
Homily Collection, is less good, though more vigorous 
than the Auchinleck poem. The relationship among these 
three variants of the theme, which have various points of 
contact, and an unpublished poem in a Cottonian manu- 
script (Titus A XXVI) awaits investigation. That they 
were taken, more or less directly, from the same Latin 
source, is clear; but only so much. 

From the latter end of the century comes also a legend 
of Marina, preserved to us in the very interesting Harle- 
ian manuscript (2253) that contains our best collection of 
early Middle English lyrics. This Marina is an undis- 
tinguished piece of versification in rhyming couplets, 
probably made in the western part of southern England. 
It tells, rather clumsily, the story of the maiden who was 
introduced into a convent of monks, where she lived as 
a man until her death, not without penitential sufferings. 
The theme was a favorite one with mediaeval collectors 
of exempla, and this tale is among the best-known ex- 
cerpts from the Vitoe Patrum. The Harleian version 
greatly resembles a slightly later one in the North-English 
Homily Collection, and at some points the two disagree 
with the Latin texts that we know. However, the north- 
ern poem was probably an independent translation, as it 
is certainly a terser and more vigorous piece of work. 



222 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

At about the same time were written two metrical 
versions of the Vision of St. Paul, which had already been 
translated in prose. The first of these new renderings is 
curious in two ways. For ong thing, it discards the usual 
machinery incident to St. Paul's visit in Hell, and con- 
sists merely of a recital of the eleven pains of Hell by a 
man returned from death. In the second place, the in- 
troductory verses are French, although the poem is en- 
tirely independent of any treatment of the Vision in Old 
French that has as yet been found. However, the writer, 
who subscribed himself Hugh, may well have translated 
some version unknown to our day. Nothing whatever has 
been discovered concerning this Hugh, save that he must 
have lived in southern England. His work is not im- 
portant, except as a curiosity, for he had no great skill 
as a legend- writer. 

The second of these new forms of the Vision follows 
one of the commoner versions of the Latin text, and was 
doubtless a direct revision of it. Though preserved only 
in an important manuscript of the South-English Leg- 
endary (Laud 108), this poem in tail-rhyme stanzas was 
probably made in the northern part of the East Midland 
district. It has no special merit as a translation or as a 
piece of verse narrative. Indeed, the freedom with which 
the original was treated added nothing to the effective- 
ness of the vision. Sufficiently clear, but not particularly 
interesting from either the literary or the hagiographical 
point of view, the work need not detain us. 

At the end of the century also, as nearly as the date can 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 223 

be determined, was composed a very interesting poem on 
Jacob and Joseph, which its editor somewhat uncertainly 
ascribes to the southern part of the Midlands. It was 
written in the long flowing couplets of the South-English 
Legendary, and in style irresistibly recalls that work, 
though it seems never to have been a part of it. It recalls 
also, be it said, the Meidan Margerete of the earlier part 
of the century, and has some of the merits of that charm- 
ing legend. The same tradition of romantic minstrelsy, 
no doubt, lay behind all such writers: a tradition that 
was eventually to give us the better English ballads and 
much good modern narrative verse. The materials of 
Jacob and Joseph were taken from the Old Testament 
without large addition; but they were treated with a 
breadth of human feeling that makes the figures of the 
story live again in the poet's swinging rhythms. Badly 
though the work has fared at the hands of copyists, its 
dramatic vividness and its homely grace have not been 
wholly obscured. Take, for example, the entrance of the 
merchants with the young Joseph into "Egypt land." 
The picture that one gets is of a band of merchants com- 
ing into a rich mediaeval city, gay with color, pulsing 
with life. Whether written in or out of a monastery, 
Jacob and Joseph is no product of cloistered anaemia, but 
of the vigorous current that flowed through the Church 
to better the life of the times. The boy who heard it once 
read or recited would never, we may be sure, forget the 
story of Joseph's adventures. 

The great South-English Legendary, described in the 



224 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

chapter preceding this, was brought together, we must 
remember, in the last quarter of the thirteenth century; 
at about the time, that is, of the legends just discussed. 
It shows the activity of the type in the Southwest towards 
the end of the century, as the individual legends indicate 
its popularity in other parts of the South and in the Mid- 
lands. In the course of the fourteenth century the North 
of England was to witness a very considerable production 
of legends in the vernacular, but for some not very evident 
reason the form did not win renewed acceptance there 
until that time. It may well be that the feudal rule of 
the Norman nobles delayed the reaction to English writ- 
ing north of the Humber somewhat longer than in the 
South, partly because the district was remote and less 
open to the influences of the growing nationalism. If so, 
the wars of Edward I with Scotland must have helped to 
spread the new spirit, for Northumberland became again, 
as in former ages, the highway of armies. 

It is a curious fact, indeed, that almost all the legends 
from the first part of the fourteenth century were written 
in the North. In that section, as we have learned, the 
North-English Homily Collection, one of the great reposi- 
tories of saintly lore, was compiled soon after the century 
opened. Aside from it, only a handful of saints' lives was 
produced until about 1350, but not one of these was 
written in a Southern dialect. Quite possibly the disturbed 
conditions incident upon the misrule of Edward II may 
be one of the reasons for the shift of legendary produc- 
tion, or at least for the failure of southern writers to con- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 225 

tinue their earlier activity. Whatever the cause, the 
break is well marked. 

Between 1300 and 1325 there were written in the 
North a verse rendering of the Gospel of Nicodemus, and 
a poem on the Childhood of Jesus which is to be distin- 
guished from the one made towards the end of the pre- 
ceding century. 

As we have seen, themes from the apocryphal gospels 
had for centuries been favorites in England; but before 
1300 no one had attempted a poetical translation of the 
popular Gospel of Nicodemus. The success of the under- 
taking, as far as the Middle Ages are concerned, can be 
estimated from the fact that the four manuscripts of the 
poem now known were written a century or more after 
the translation was first made, and imply the existence of 
numerous other copies. Moreover, as Dr. Craigie has 
shown, the York cycle of miracle plays borrowed exten- 
sively from the poem. The popularity that it enjoyed was, 
indeed, well merited by its qualities. Though rudely exe- 
cuted, it is ingenious: in metre the elaborate twelve-line 
stanzas in which it is written requiring a degree of skill 
for their making that would baffle most modern poets. 
In spite of the self-imposed difficulties of his task, the 
poet succeeded in weaving his rhythm into the long nar- 
rative (about eighteen hundred lines) with dramatic vigor 
and a not inconsiderable degree of romantic feeling. Like 
the verse of the better miracle plays, this has the solid 
merits of boldness and rapidity, even when it lacks grace. 
It is not a very accurate translation of the apocryphal 



226 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

gospel, but it narrates the events of the story in a manner 
well calculated to impress them upon the mind of a popu- 
lar audience. 

The Childhood of Jesus is in some ways a less preten- 
tious work than the poetical Gospel of Nicodemus, but in 
its own fashion it is quite as successful. The three manu- 
scripts from which we know it differ from one another in 
content, and two of them were written by scribes in the 
Midlands, with consequent changes in dialect. Never- 
theless, the three are merely redactions of the same poem, 
which in its longest form extends to nine hundred and 
twenty-five lines. In subject matter it covers almost the 
same ground as the Childhood from the thirteenth cen- 
tury; but the miracles are not ordered in the same way, 
and there is no discernible relationship between the two 
poems. Indeed, no direct source for the later one has 
been discovered. It is written in twelve-line stanzas, of 
which the first eight of the four-stressed lines are rhymed 
alternately on two rhymes, while the final quatrain intro- 
duces two new sounds. Perhaps the peculiar fluency of 
the narrative is in some degree the result of this metrical 
scheme. In any case, the effect gained is rapid and 
smooth: the same undecorated and unshadowed flow of 
verse that was often obtained by romancers Who did not 
try for the bold staccato movement ridiculed by Chaucer 
in his Sir Thopas. 

During the first half of the century there was also made 
in the North a St. Alexis in verse, of which four manu- 
scripts are known. The same legend was included in the 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 227 

North-English Homily Collection, but the two versions are 
altogether distinct. The independent poem was based, 
in my opinion, on the Latin of the Alphabetum Narra- 
tionuniy the important collection of exempla now ascribed 
to Arnold of Liege. 1 The cult of St. Alexis was widely 
popular in England, as can be seen from the fact that the 
legend was six times versified during the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries. The extravagant asceticism of the 
story was perhaps what commended it to mediaeval taste; 
but I believe that it owed quite as much to the romantic 
picturesqueness of the narrative. Alexis, it will be re- 
called, deserted wealth and bride for beggary, and re- 
turned after a lapse of years to die a beggar in his own 
father's house. The swift turns of such a tale could not 
fail to be pleasing to an imaginative folk, quite apart 
from its spiritual appeal. The northern poem that we 
are considering owes less, indeed, to the skill of its maker 
than to the story with which he was dealing. Unlike the 
version in the northern collection of legends, this was 
obviously written for oral recitation, and it has both the 
good and the bad qualities of many such productions. 
The tail-rhyme stanzas go swinging onward quickly, with 
a touch of pathos here, a bit of swift dialogue there, 
but without much vividness of scene or much dignity. 
Like a good deal of Middle English verse, the poem 
would doubtless be more impressive if scribes had not 
confused its language. As it stands, the reader can 
merely grow aware that to its early auditors it must have 
1 See p. 201, above. 



228 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

seemed a pleasant and profitable thing to hear a min- 
strel recite. 

Another interesting legend of the first half of the cen- 
tury is an East Midland poem entitled Celestin. It is a 
hagiographical curiosity, and in some respects is peculiar 
as a piece of verse-making. Although the story purports 
to concern a St. Celestin who died as pope in 432, it has 
nothing whatever to do with his actual career. Instead, 
it is an odd mixture of the themes of Theophilus, Faustus, 
and the Seven Deadly Sins; and it must have come to be 
attached to the name of Celestin in the same way that 
the events of the Gregory legend were attributed to Greg- 
ory the Great. Celestin, a dull boy at school, makes a 
compact with the devil to obtain knowledge, and gets 
preferment by the devil's aid until he is chosen pope. 
When he is tricked into celebrating mass "in the chapel 
of Jerusalem" at Rome (obviously the church of Santa 
Croce in Gerusalemme, and a curious anticipation of 
Henry IV's Jerusalem chamber), the Seven Deadly Sins 
in the form of devils appear, to carry him off. After a 
debate with them, he is saved by the Virgin and com- 
mands his own execution. I have been unable to find any 
trace of this legend elsewhere, though one cannot sup- 
pose that the English author originated it. The poem, 
which is found in only a single manuscript, has consider- 
able vigor of descriptive phrase and is also interesting 
because of its semi-dramatic form. It is, indeed, almost 
as dramatic in its narrative method as the thirteenth 
century Harrowing of Hell, and quite as much so in effect. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 229 

In connection with the beginnings of the drama, with the 
story themes that it combines, and with its curious stan- 
zaic form (a tail-rhyme stanza of six lines, with the fifth 
line unrhymed) it deserves closer study than it has ever 
received. 

About the middle of the century legend-writing began 
to be practised again in the south of England. At this 
period, it will be remembered, a partial translation in 
verse of the Legenda Aurea was made in that region. We 
have, besides, at least two separate legends that show a 
reviving interest in the genre: Barlaam and Josaphat and 
Ewphrosyne. Neither one of them, however, has much 
importance, for they are merely awkward translations in 
four-stressed rhyming couplets and have no pretensions 
to literary grace. Because they are found side by side in 
a single manuscript and because they seem clearly to be 
translations from Old French, it is quite possible that the 
same clumsy versifier was responsible for both legends. 
I cannot believe that the texts on which they were based, 
whatever they may have been, had any value except to 
spread the knowledge of two famous legends among the 
unlearned; and certainly the English version served no 
other purpose. 

To the mid-century may also be assigned a Vision of 
St. Paul, two other versions of which have been men- 
tioned above. This new rendering was made on the basis 
of the same Latin text paraphrased by the writer of the 
poem in the Laud MS., but it follows the Latin much 
more closely. Indeed, it is a sufficiently faithful rendering, 



230 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

though not a brilliant one, of a very well-known version 
of the story. It is in the familiar four-beat couplets. 
Where it was made cannot be determined, for the dialect 
in which it is preserved shows a mixture of Midland and 
Southern forms. Even more difficult to place geographi- 
cally is The Trental of St. Gregory , a somewhat unedifying 
story that was versified at about this time. The work 
obtained a considerable popularity, though its rhymed 
couplets jog through the narrative rather lamely. The 
mixture of dialects gives no clue to the district where it 
was first written. Its source is likewise unknown, for that 
it was based on an Old French exemplum, as suggested by 
Professor Varnhagen, is extremely unlikely. It is perhaps 
not quite a safe index of the vogue enjoyed by the legend 
that it was twice copied out in the famous Vernon MS., 
yet that curious fact helps to confirm the impression of 
popularity otherwise obtained. The tale, of course, has 
no more connection with any real Pope Gregory than had 
the legendary life of Gregory versified in the thirteenth 
century. The Trental tells how his mother's ghost ap- 
peared to Gregory after he became pope, confessed a 
hidden fault of her youth, and begged him to say masses 
for her throughout a year. By so doing, he saved her 
soul. It will be seen that the story belongs to the lowest 
level of hagiographical lore. Undoubtedly it was sug- 
gested by the incident in the life of Gregory the Great, 
as narrated in the first instance in the early Vita by a 
monk of Whitby : how he was moved by pity to pray for 
the soul of the Emperor Trajan. But in this case imagi- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 231 

native tradition played with a beautiful incident unfor- 
tunately and sadly distorted it. 

Somewhat after the middle of the century, a new ver- 
sion of the life of St. Margaret was written in the North. 
This Margaret must have been based on the same original 
as the remarkable thirteenth century version that we 
have already noticed. From the same materials, however, 
a work of very much less intrinsic worth was made. The 
short rhymed couplets of this new rendering are artlessly 
strung together: they convey the outlines and even the 
details of the story, but they give no sense of its spiritual 
value or of its worth as narrative. The chief claim that the 
unambitious effort has to recollection lies in its obvious 
effect upon a considerable circle of readers. We find part 
of it copied out in a fifteenth century common-place book 
at an old country-house in Suffolk; we find it selected as 
the text of an old print, of which the unique copy is in the 
Chetham Library at Manchester. 

More interesting, however, is a new rendering of St 
Patrick's Purgatory, which is likewise to be dated between 
1350 and 1400. This version is entitled Owayne Myles, 
from the hero of the adventure, and is in the short rhym- 
ing couplets of so much popular verse. It tells the story 
of Sir Owain's visit to the purgatory in a fashion quite 
unpretentious but not unpleasing. Although its maker, 
who seems to have lived in the East Midland district, 
had no such gift as distinguished the anonymous poet 
from the same region who had earlier treated the same 
theme, he avoided clumsiness of diction, for the most part, 



232 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

and let his verse move rapidly. The smooth flow of the 
narrative is, indeed, the chief merit of the version. 

With a new form of the Catharine legend, which was 
made about the same time, we find ourselves in the South 
again. This version has been preserved in a very imper- 
fect fashion, its form having been changed by a clumsy 
scribe, it would appear, from six-line stanzas to rhymed 
couplets. Any just estimate of the poem in its original 
state is thus impossible, though one cannot suppose that 
it had great merit. As it now stands, certainly, it lacks 
any beauty or special interest. It is merely a rather clumsy 
piece of versification that attests the continued popularity 
of the saint. 

Of two new poems on St. Alexis, one of them vaguely 
ascribed to the second half of the century and the other 
to the last quarter, little need be added to what was said 
above concerning the northern Alexis. The one was writ- 
ten in the South; the other is preserved in so mixed a 
dialect that its provenience is difficult to make out. The 
two were obviously independent of one another, yet were 
based on very similar sources. The second (found only 
in MS. Laud 622) seems to be a translation from Old 
French, though not of any text now known. Both are 
undistinguished pieces of verse in the popular tail-rhyme 
stanza. Since the legend was included in the Scottish 
Legend Collection at the end of the century, as it had 
earlier been in the North-English Homily Collection, it 
was thus versified five times between 1300 and 1400. As 
I have already said, one can understand the reason for 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 233 

this general interest. One must, however, regret that the 
interest was not satisfied by some more adequate render- 
ing. 

From these legends of the mid-century and somewhat 
later, undistinguished as they were — mere populariza- 
tions of stories already popular — there is great relief in 
turning to the product of the years 1375-1400. With 
those lustra began what was to be the most brilliant per- 
iod in English hagiography, as far as literary merit is con- 
cerned, since the time of Cynewulf and his school. Inter- 
esting though many of the earlier Middle English lives of 
saints in verse had been, and admirable though some of 
them had been in style and treatment, there had been no 
uniformity of excellence among them. It is a remarkable 
fact, in view of this, that every legend which can be satis- 
factorily dated in the last quarter of the fourteenth cen- 
tury has, as far as my knowledge goes, undeniable worth 
and special interest; while the first half of the fifteenth 
century, along with a few mediocre lives, produced a 
very considerable body of legends that deserve serious 
consideration and praise. This was Chaucer's working- 
time; but not so much to his influence can be ascribed 
the new standard of craftsmanship as to the forces that 
gave Chaucer and his contemporaries the opportunity of 
poetical achievement. About the operation of such forces 
in any age we know little; and cannot in our explanations 
do much more than express our ignorance. Chaucer and 
his fellows appeared, but just why we cannot adequately 
expound. English had ceased to be a secondary language 



234 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

in England, to be sure; the national consciousness was 
awake. But the country was badly ruled, there was much 
corruption, while war and pestilence had taken from the 
land an almost unexampled toll of death. Conditions 
were not the best for literary production, one would say. 
Yet the time was ripe — the writers found both impulse 
and skill. Saints' legends flourished by benefit of the 
same forces that affected other genres. 

It is an indication, no doubt, of the heightened con- 
sciousness of English literature as an art that at this 
period we begin to find recorded more names of legend- 
writers. Not only did men who were at least semi-profes- 
sional authors take to the composition of saints' lives, but 
casual versifiers began to record their names. The ano- 
nymity of the Middle Ages has, I think, been over-stressed 
by students of the vernacular literatures : the point is that 
writers acquired the habit of signing their works only 
when they came to feel that they were penning something 
not wholly fugitive and temporary. Names multiply in 
English literary history, before the end of the fourteenth 
century, not only because there was a stronger impulse 
to write the native tongue but also because the native 
writers felt the increasing dignity of the vernacular. 

From the last quarter of the century come five anony- 
mous verse legends, all of them, as I have said, of marked 
value. In 1375, as we know from his own statement in 
an epilogue, an East Midland poet gave the story of 
Adam and Eve a new form. The version in rhymed coup- 
lets, made about a century earlier, was a simple and not 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 235 

wholly unsuccessful narrative, but this new translation is 
greatly superior to it both in management of events and 
of verse. Through two hundred tail-rhyme stanzas the 
poet so frames events, so phrases both dialogue and de- 
scription, that the reader is held unwearied. This strophic 
Canticam de Creatione, as it is called in the unique manu- 
script, was based for the most part on the same materials 
as the earlier Adam and Eve, but includes also a brief 
outline of the history of the cross-wood. It is, of course, 
an entirely independent rendering of the Latin sources. 
Even more interesting are two legends in the well- 
known Thornton MS., a miscellany collected and trans- 
scribed by Robert Thornton, a Yorkshireman, who be- 
came archdeacon of Bedford and who died in 1450. The 
saints' lives that he found worthy of inclusion in his vol- 
ume were both written in the North : a Christopher and a 
John the Evangelist. The former, of which an extensive 
section has been lost with certain leaves of the manu- 
script, must once have been a poem of very considerable 
length. In its mutilated state, indeed, it runs to more 
than a thousand lines. It is on the scale of the romances, 
which it resembles in many ways. The metre is the fa- 
miliar rhymed couplet, but of a particularly easy and 
fluent execution. For the treatment of the legend that 
the poet gives, the verse was singularly well adapted. 
He had, moreover, the power of visualizing the important 
scenes of the story and of making the reader feel, accord- 
ingly, the dignity and pathos of the giant Christopher's 
search for the Lord of the World and of his humble 



236 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

service to Christ. It is the later legend of the saint, of 
course, that is recounted: concerning the paynim Chris- 
topher, who would have as master only the mightiest, 
and who was rewarded, before he met martyrdom, by the 
privilege of carrying his Lord across the turbulent estu- 
ary. Our northern poet rose to the height of the occasion 
in describing that scene, but elsewhere also he gave the 
beautiful legend a worthy dress. He was not a maker of 
phrases; he plunged straight on with his narrative; he 
had, in short, the manner of the ablest romancers who 
wrote for a popular hearing. Yet the tone was a proper 
one for legend-writing, and the superscription of the 
manuscript is just: "to the heryng or the redyng of the 
whilke storye langes grete mede, and it be done with 
devocione. ,, 

The John the Evangelist is a poem more ambitious than 
the Christopher in form, but quite as successful. It is 
written in a curious metre that combines alliterative lines 
into elaborate stanzas by means of rhyme: a difficult 
device much used, and rather delightfully at times, by 
northern poets. In John the Evangelist, certainly, the 
complication of the stanzas does not hamper expression 
or lead to mere ingenuity of handling. The poem is a 
series of invocations to St. John, and to that extent lyri- 
cal; but it rehearses the chief events of his life as given 
in the New Testament and in apocryphal writings. There 
is great tenderness of feeling in the delineation of the 
saint's care for Christ's Mother, an exquisiteness that 
stamps the work as the production of a poet who was 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 237 

capable of the finer shades of human emotion. Withal, 
the love of color and the richness of vocabulary, so char- 
acteristic of the school by which alliterative verse was 
revived in the fourteenth century, give the poem imagi- 
native appeal. It is a misfortune that we do not know 
the poet's name, for he was akin to the equally unknown 
author of the Pearl, though inferior to that great artist 
in his gifts. 

Another anonymous legend of the period, however, has 
sometimes been ascribed to the Pearl poet, and is quite 
worthy of him. Unfortunately, we have no evidence save 
similarity of language by which to connect Erkenwald 
with either the Pearl or Sir Gawayne and the Green 
Knight. That it was a production of the same school, 
however, there is no manner of doubt: it was written in 
the Northwestern Midlands and in a style that reminds 
one at every turn of the allegorical elegy and the romance. 
The treatment of the subject, withal, shows the same 
imaginative daring, the same boldness of conception. 
Erkenwald is not a life of the saint, who died as Bishop 
of London in 692-94, but the story of an incident during 
his bishopric. While St. Paul's was rebuilding, it runs, 
there was found a rich tomb containing the body of a 
man clothed in royal robes and crowned. The corpse was 
undecayed, with the garments upon it as fresh as on the 
day of burial. When St. Erkenwald was summoned to 
witness the miracle, he commanded the man, in the name 
of Christ, to tell who he was and what was his state. 
Then the body spoke, relating that he had been magis- 



238 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

trate in "the new Troy" more than a thousand years 
before Christ, during the reign of Sir Belyne; that he had 
lived righteously; but that Christ's mercy had not been 
extended to him when He harrowed Hell. So moved was 
Erkenwald by this recital that tears dropped from his 
eyes ; and, while he spoke the words of baptism, one tear 
fell upon the face of the corpse. Whereupon, the man 
gave thanks that his time of waiting was at an end, "for 
the words thou speakest and thy tears, the bright stream 
from thy eyes, have become my baptism." And the 
corpse with its gorgeous vestments fell into sudden decay. 
This miracle is found, as far as I can discover, in none of 
the accounts of the saint, though many wonders are at- 
tributed to him. Possibly our poet may have found the 
story in the "crafty cronecles" of which he speaks, or he 
may have taken his materials from a tradition of the 
Welsh marches. At all events, his three hundred and 
fifty -two unrhymed alliterative lines owed much to his 
own imagination. They have the charm of color and 
sound and movement that goes with romantic poetry, 
and a restraint of mood by which the sensuous appeal is 
moulded into beauty. It is a rare thing to find a saintly 
miracle so sweetly and yet so powerfully told. Despite 
the difficulties presented by its unfamiliar speech, the 
poem should not lie perdu, as it has done, to lovers of 
English poetry and of ecclesiastical lore. 

A legend that scarcely falls. within the limits of the 
type, yet must still be there classed, is the poem diversely 
known as Susanna and The Pistel of Swete Susan. In 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 239 

content it is simply the story of the adventure of Susanna 
with the elders ; but so bedecked with poetic description, 
after the manner of the school of writers who used the 
revived alliterative verse, as to be almost wholly a work 
of the author's imagination. Concerning its authorship 
and provenience Middle English scholars have at times 
been greatly agitated, and with good reason. Because 
of a reference in Wyntoun's Chronicle of Scotland it has 
been ascribed to a poet named Huchown, who has further 
been identified with Sir Hugh of Eglinton. The dialect 
of the manuscript is scarcely that of fourteenth century 
Scotland, which makes the second conjecture most haz- 
ardous and raises doubts about the first. A discussion of 
the question would here be out of place. It is enough to 
record that not long before the last quarter of the century 
began, or perhaps somewhat later, a northern poet of 
considerable gifts related the popular story of Susanna 
with an elaboration of stanzaic form that rivalled the 
elaboration of setting. 

Chaucer himself made but a single excursion in legend- 
writing, although the Monk of The Canterbury Tales is 
represented as prepared to "seyn the lyf of seint Ed- 
ward," and the Man of Law refers to The Legend of Good 
Women as the " Seintes Legende of Cupide." The Man of 
Law's Tale in one way, indeed, and the Prioress's Tale in 
another, approximate the type ; but the story of Constance 
is, after all, a romance, and the tale of the "litel cler- 
geoun" an exemplum. What is of importance to us with 
reference to these two stories is that they show Chaucer 



240 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

capable of understanding the spirit in which legends 
ought to be written. This he showed again, and more 
fully, in the life of St. Cecilia, which he ascribed to the 
Second Nun. 

The date of St. Cecilia, like many another vexing ques- 
tion of Chaucerian chronology, has been the subject of 
much inquiry of late years. That the tale was not, in 
the first instance, written for the Second Nun is proved 
by a reference in the prologue to the narrator as an " un- 
worthy sone of Eve," and by the appeal at the end to 
"y° w that reden that I wryte." That it was written 
before The Legend of Good Women, which is ascribed to 
1385 or 1386, we know also, for it is mentioned in the 
prologue of that work. The date that has been custom- 
arily assigned to the poem, however, is 1373-4, though 
Professor Kittredge has recently remarked that this 
" seems on the whole a little too early." The tendency has 
been to place it as soon as possible after Chaucer's return 
from his first Italian mission in 1373. Quite lately Pro- 
fessor Carleton Brown has advanced the ingenious argu- 
ment that the stanzas of the prologue which Chaucer 
imitated from Dante's Paradiso, eking out lines with 
recollected phrases from hymns, were inserted after the 
prologue was first written. Unfortunately, though Pro- 
fessor Brown shows that the stanzas in question — an 
invocation to the Virgin — are an elaborate mosaic of 
phrases that had stuck in the poet's memory, he presents 
no evidence that the passage is an insertion at all, which 
is the crucial point. That it may have been is wholly an 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 241 

assumption, based on the fact that the prologue runs 
smoothly enough if the stanzas be left out, and on the 
feeling that they are better poetry than the rest — that 
they are an anachronism as they are now placed. Such 
contentions repose so much on personal taste, it need 
scarcely be said, that they have no validity in settling a 
prosaic question of date. In point of fact, the early date 
assigned the £2. Cecilia as a whole rests entirely on im- 
pressionistic criticism: on the assumption that Chaucer 
would not have written it after he reached full maturity. 
Into this matter we must, after a moment, inquire; but 
we may safely assert that such arguments do not prove 
when the poem was written. That Chaucer made it be- 
fore The Legend of Good Women we know; that it may be 
dated after 1373 we surmise; beyond that we have to 
confess our ignorance. 

Upon what version of the Acta S. Cwcilia? the poet 
based his story we are equally in doubt. The studies 
of Kolbing and Professor Holthausen, however, have 
made clear at least three points. Chaucer did not use 
Jean de Vignay's translation of the- Leg enda Aurea, as 
was formerly said; he must have had before him a Latin 
text greatly resembling that translated into Greek by 
Simeon Metaphrastes; and he must have rendered his 
original into English with remarkable fidelity. It is quite 
possible that a properly directed study of the Latin ver- 
sions may yet reveal the form that Chaucer knew. 

The faithfulness of his translation is a matter of con- 
siderable importance. Scholars wiser in Chaucerian than 



242 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

in saintly lore — wiser, too, I fear, in textual criticism 
than in humanity — have not scrupled to rate the poet 
soundly for showing so little originality in his Cecilia. 
"Skill in combining materials," says one who excepts 
the beautiful invocation, "is just what is conspicuously 
absent." Yes : he did not combine; he changed the legend 
as slightly as possible, as far as one can see; he was true 
to his statements at the opening of the poem. 

I have heer doon my feithful bisinesse, 
After the legende, in translacioun, 

and again : — 

For both have I the wordes and sentence 
Of him that at the seintes reverence 
The storie wroot, and folwe hir legende, 
And prey yow, that ye wol my werk amende. 

To the penetrating criticism of Professor Root that 
Chaucer's "deliberate choice of theme, not in the first 
place for the Second Nun, but for himself, is a valuable 
piece of testimony as to his deeper and more serious life," 
it might be added that his treatment of the theme "at 
the seintes reverence" is equally a revelation of the great 
poet's inner self. The religious tone of his legend is as 
admirable as is its technical execution. 

Chaucer's achievement in writing the Cecilia is the 
greater, to my mind, that he was not forced to falsify his 
original in order to get the poetical effects he attained. 
He seems, from motives that do him great credit, to have 
been more chary about letting his imagination play with 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 243 

the story than were most mediaeval legend- writers; and 
yet he succeeded in giving to it a form as remarkable for 
its beauty as for its human appeal. Keeping "wordes 
and sentence," he nevertheless made the figure of the 
saint as vivid against the background of miracle as are 
all the personalities in his maturer work. The virgin's 
holiness shines through the limpid flow of the poet's fav- 
orite stanzas — he wrote in the rhyme royal; yet her 
humanity is not obscured. Nothing but the most rigorous 
sobriety and simplicity of execution could have given 
this quality to the work. Not only Cecilia but her hus- 
band Valerian and his brother Tiburce, who precede her 
to martyrdom, are pictured with a solid mastery that is 
unusual in legend-writing. 

It is aptness of phrase, perhaps, careful adapting of 
metrical expression to the required mood, that achieves 
this result; but these things are the basis of great poetry. 
Unless Chaucer had before him a Latin text much more 
felicitous than any I have seen, the charm of his legend 
is due in very large measure to his own genius. This he 
accomplished, moreover, be it remembered, without un- 
faithfulness of rendering. The only liberty that he seems 
to have permitted himself was to hurry on from the con- 
version of the two brothers to their martyrdom. The in- 
stinct of the born story-teller would have urged him to 
this course, which in no way changed the legend though 
it brought the leading characters into sharper relief. The 
difference between his treatment and other forms of the 
life is the difference between portraits of the same person 



244 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

by a great painter and by his less richly gifted contem- 
poraries. While writing his prologue, where he could ex- 
press freely his own meditations, Chaucer's mind must 
have been swept by a flood of recollected phrases and 
images, out of which he made the beautiful mosaic that 
fittingly introduces the legend. If the sober reverence of 
treatment throughout the poem be remembered, it is 
small wonder that he fitted an invocation to the Virgin 
into the prologue; small wonder, too, that the poetic 
level of his verse rose to the height of the religious emo- 
tion he was expressing. What he made was not a patch- 
work of phrases from Dante and the hymn-writers, nor is 
the credit for its loveliness due to them. It is Chaucer's 
prayer, forged by his brain from some of the loftiest ut- 
terances of Christian faith; Chaucer's prayer as certainly 
as if he had newly minted each phrase and word that it 
contains. 

A saint's life from the very end of the fourteenth cen- 
tury aptly illustrates the changed conditions of legend- 
writing that came about with the final adoption of Eng- 
lish as the natural medium of expression both for the 
high-born and for men of low estate. It was written 
by a squire of a great lord, who thus whiled away the 
tedium of an imprisonment into which he had voluntarily 
followed his master. By a fortunate chance, the author 
gave his name and the circumstances in which he made his 
legend. He was called William Paris, and he was the sole 
attendant remaining to Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of 
Warwick, exiled to the Isle of Man in 1397 by Richard II. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 245 

Very seldom in the history of mediaeval literature is such 
accuracy of statement possible. 

The saint whose life the faithful squire chose as the 
solace of his hours of idleness was Christina. The legend 
of Christina had already been included in one of the ex- 
panded versions of the North-English Homily Collection ; 
it was selected for translation by the author of the Scottish 
Legend Collection at about William Paris's time; and it 
was to be the subject of a poem by Osbern Bokenam 
towards the middle of the next century. These four 
translations, however, were entirely independent of one 
another, and based, I think, on different Latin texts. 
Although it is possible that the passio used by William 
Paris perished on the Isle of Man, it seems likely that 
a form very similar to it may still be in existence. There 
is something more than a possibility, indeed, that a still 
inedited manuscript of the Vatican Library (B.H.L. no. 
1748a) may enable us to discover with how much ac- 
curacy Warwick's attendant followed his source. Even 
without clearer knowledge of his original, however, we 
can see that the achievement of William Paris was in 
some ways remarkable. He was not a great poet, to be 
sure; as far as we know, this may have been his only 
essay in verse, and it showed no extraordinary gifts. 
Yet it is in every respect a more accomplished and 
pleasing translation of the legend than the other three 
that I have mentioned. More than that, it has a charm 
of movement and phrase distinctly reminiscent of 
Chaucer's Cecilia. There is no way of proving, of course, 



246 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

that William Paris knew Chaucer's legend and used it 
as a model, but there is every probability that a book- 
ish young man at the court of Richard II would have 
read the Second Nun's Tale and would have remem- 
bered it when he sat down to write. Except on the sup- 
position that such was the case, it is difficult to under- 
stand how the Christina happens to show the qualities 
that give it distinction. William Paris did not ape 
Chaucer's phrases or refashion his story on the basis of 
Chaucer's narrative art; but the treatment of his eight- 
line stanza and the quality of his diction recall at every 
turn the master's handling. It was his misfortune that 
he chose a saint's life less capable of artistic treatment 
than St. Cecilia's, yet it must be said that he made of 
the rather stereotyped martyrdom a poem of unexpected 
interest. Since William Paris and his legend are almost 
unknown, I quote two stanzas by way of illustration. 
The first is self-explanatory, while the second concerns 
the misfortunes of Thomas de Beauchamp. 

Thus some have grace or thei borne be, 
As had the Baptiste, goode Seint Johne, 
And somme in tendre age, parde, 
As Cristyne had, that faire womane; 
And some in elde when youghte is gone, 
As in Poules lyfe we may see; 
And some whene thei shall die anone, 
As Barabas thefe, that honge so hye. 



Where are his knyghtis that with hyme yede 
Whane he was in prosperite? 
Where are the squiers now at nede 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 247 

That sumetyme thoughte thei wold not flee? 

Of yomene hade he grete plente 

Thate he was wonte to cloth and feede: 

Nowe is ther none of the mene 

Thate ons dare se ther lorde fore drede. 



At about the time when William Paris was writing his 
poem, the anonymous author' of the Scottish Legend Col- 
lection was translating his series of saints' lives beyond 
the border; and only a little later in Shropshire, John 
Mirk compiled his Festial for the use of parish priests. 
The significance of the latter work, which was discussed 
in the chapter preceding this, can in some respects be 
better appreciated after our review of the course that leg- 
ends ran during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 
It was in prose; and the reader will note that from the 
closing years of the twelfth century until the very end 
of Chaucer's life no prose legend is of record. With the 
turn of the fifteenth century, however, the practice of 
making translations in English prose revived, which can 
mean nothing else than that the circle of persons who 
wished to read, as well as to hear read, the lives of saints 
had been greatly widened. During the fifteenth century, 
as a matter of fact, almost as many legends were written 
in prose as in verse. Before considering them, however, 
it will perhaps be better first to follow the current of the 
poetical lives until, with the outbreak of the Wars of the 
Roses in 1455, the composition of them virtually ceased. 
The prose legends spanned the century, which was to 
witness at its end so marked a change of conditions in 



248 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

literary production that the debacle of the Reformation 
cannot be said to have come without warning. 

At the beginning of the century was made a translation 
in rhyming couplets of the Latin prose Visio Tnugdali 
that won a considerable success, although it was without 
much merit. The Vision of Tundale was an imitation of 
earlier visions such as the Purgatory of St. Patrick and the 
Vision of Paul, but it was less well organized and more 
repetitious even in its best versions. As in the Purgatory, 
the scene of the story is Ireland, and striking details like 
the Bridge of Souls are taken over with little variation 
from the earlier work. The chief difference lies in the 
fact that the hero is wicked and suffers purgatorial tor- 
ments as a warning. Tundale is represented as an Irish 
knight of the mid-twelfth century. The English version, 
which is a poem of more than two thousand lines, was 
made in the North and followed the Latin original with 
unimaginative fidelity. 

In the North, also, and early in the century, was com- 
piled a life of St. Cuthbert in verse, the first, save the 
St. Erlcenwald, of a series of local legends that was to be 
a marked feature of the new period of complete national 
consciousness. The St. Cuthbert is an ambitious work in 
four books, and runs to nearly eight thousand five hun- 
dred lines; but it has no interest except as showing the 
current of the times. It is, indeed, a most tedious ex- 
ample of prolix verse-making. The author was a rude 
craftsman, with no better control of the tail-rhyme stan- 
zas by which he tried to vary the monotony of his poem 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 249 

than of the short rhyming couplets in which he wrote the 
greater part of it. He made from his materials neither 
picturesque narrative, nor sober history of the early 
Anglian Church, nor yet sympathetic biography. For the 
most part, he drew upon well-known Latin works for 
his information, and otherwise preserved little that is 
valuable. His ponderous work is, in brief, a mechanical 
compilation without the merits of popular poetry or of 
consciously artistic narrative. 

Vastly more interesting and valuable in every respect 
is the little known life of an obscure thirteenth century 
hermit which was written in Yorkshire at about the same 
time. Of St. Robert of Knaresborough, who was thus cele- 
brated, almost nothing is known save from the unique 
manuscript of the English poetical life. This manuscript 
seems to have come from the house of the Trinitarian or 
Maturine Friars at Knaresborough, which was on the 
foundation of grants made to St. Robert during his life- 
time. Aside from the English legend, it contains a life in 
Latin verse and one in Latin prose. Both of the latter are 
still inedited, while the English poem is accessible only in 
a text published in 1824. A modern edition of the entire 
manuscript is much to be desired, for the English portion 
of it has great interest as a linguistic document, while 
the hagiographical and antiquarian value of the whole 
can hardly be over-estimated. The history of the order 
of the Trinitarian Friars, for one thing, is singularly 
obscure, although an account of their operations for 
the redemption of captives among Jews and Saracens 



250 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

would be one of the most romantic chapters of mediae- 
val history. 

The English Life of St. Robert seems to have been 
written by the head of the Trinitarian house at Knares- 
borough, — 

That I, all yff I simple be, 
Occupyes als presidents 

He wrote, in such unadorned couplets as that just quoted, 
an account both of Robert's life and of the foundation of 
his house. Because his work is known to so few I tran- 
scribe his opening lines : — 

Then frendes fares well at a fest 
And glewmen gladdes tham wit gest, 
Of harpyng som has lyst to here 
And som of carpyng of tales sere; 
Of Arthure, Ector, and Achilles, 
Princes that wer proude in prese, 
Of kynges and kempes, of conquerours, 
Of lords, of ladies, of paramours, 
That ar bott vaine and vanite. 
Of slyke sail noght my carpyng be, 
Bott of a better, he me haste, 
Fadir and son and halygaste. 

It will be seen that the author was not greatly accom- 
plished, but also that he had the gift of fluent verse. 
Indeed, the homely simplicity which he combined with 
reverence make his rapidly moving narrative interesting 
of itself, as it would be, in any case, from the nature of 
his material. 

St. Robert's career was picturesque in its variety and 
its contrasts. Like Francis of Assisi, who was almost 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 251 

exactly his contemporary, he was of good birth. After 
taking sub-deacon's orders, he left York with his page 
and remained for some months at Newminster Abbey. 
He then returned to his birthplace, but soon joined a 
hermit (who had been a knight) at Knaresborough. 
Thence he was driven by thieves, but after remaining for 
some time at Spofford and at Hedley Abbey he returned 
to take up his residence definitely at the place with which 
his name is associated. Neither the persecutions of two 
lords nor the entreaties of his brother — then mayor of 
York — could dislodge him. From them, as well as from 
King John, who visited him, he obtained gifts that estab- 
lished him at the head of a little community. So great was 
his reputation at the time of his death that the monks of 
Fountains Abbey tried to obtain his body and were driven 
away by the men of Knaresborough in force. Along 
with much interesting detail, this is the story of his life, 
which deserves to be better known. 

Probably in the North also was made, at this time, a 
new version of St. Alexis in rhymed couplets, the sixth 
and last of the Middle English poetical treatments of 
the theme. Like the two northern versions of a century 
earlier, it was written for the pleasure of unlearned men; 
and its only virtue is its appeal by homely pictures to 
their sense of dramatic contrasts. In his description of 
the marriage-feast the poet indulged his fancy as the 
makers of popular romances were wont to do, and 

Every man had there plente 
Of claret wyne and pymente. 



252 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

There is, moreover, the swift movement characteristic of 
all the better specimens among tales designed for the 
common people. This is the shortest rendering of St. 
Alexis, and not the least interesting. 

Still another legend that received a new dress in the 
early part of the century was Theophilus. It had already 
been adapted for both the South-English Legendary and 
the North-English Homily Collection ; but this later inde- 
pendent rendering has points of interest that the earlier 
ones do not possess. Like the thirteenth century Harrow- 
ing of Hell and the fourteenth century Celestin, it is semi- 
dramatic in form. Quite clearly, I think, it must either 
have been based on a miracle play or have been a con- 
scious attempt at dramatic form. The story is told almost 
wholly by dialogue and soliloquy; and in many places the 
connecting tissue of narrative is entirely omitted, so that 
speech follows speech without interruption. It is hardly 
possible in the circumstances to decide why the dramatic 
element should have been so emphasized: either of the 
two possibilities mentioned above may be the true expla- 
nation. The poem cannot be classed as a play, I think, 
but it is an important witness to the rising popularity of 
drama at the time — the age, it will be remembered, when 
the miracle cycles were taking shape. This Theophilus is 
written in six-line tail-rhyme stanzas, terse and bold of 
phrasing, though sufficiently crude. The traffic of the 
clerk Theophilus with the Devil for the sake of position 
and riches was a subject of as absorbing interest to the 
Middle Ages as was the evil ambition of Faustus to the 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 253 

Renaissance; and it lent itself early to dramatic presen- 
tation. Especially vivid in the poem we are considering 
is the scene where Theophilus reads the charter by which 
he gives his soul to Satanas. To its generation and to its 
proper audience it must have furnished the thrill that 
Marlowe so magnificently provided for a later day. The 
intervention of the Virgin at the end weakens the tragic 
significance of the story, as always, but it gives a melo- 
dramatic denoument less incongruous than Goethe's philo- 
sophical solution of the Faust story. Our fifteenth century 
Theophilus deserves greater fame than it has hitherto en- 
joyed, not as a finished product of art, but as one link in 
a long chain of legends. Unfortunately the mixture of 
dialect in the unique manuscript of the work prevents us 
from knowing in what part of England it was composed. 

Also mixed in dialect is another poem of the early 
fifteenth century which must, like Theophilus, be classed 
as a legend though it is not the life of a saint. The story 
of Robert of Sicily, the proud king on whose throne God 
placed an angel till he had learned humility as a beggar, 
is not unknown to modern readers. The fifteenth century 
version in rhymed couplets, though unpretentious and 
perfectly commonplace, seems to have enjoyed a consid- 
erable popularity. Probably any rendering of a theme so 
well designed to flatter the imagination of the populace 
would have found equal favor, no matter what its qualities. 

Before passing to a consideration of more important 
works, I must mention the fact that a new version of 
The Trental of St. Gregory was made in the fifteenth cen- 



254 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

tury — and probably in the first decades of it. The work 
has no importance, however, save as showing that the 
legend persisted in popular favor, for it is no less despi- 
cable than the version from the previous century already 
described. One can only say that the story deserved no 
better dress than the rude couplets in which it is clumsily 
arrayed. 

Interesting among the legend-writers of the time whose 
names we know, was John Audelay. He was not, to be 
sure, a poet of any remarkable natural gifts or technical 
skill. Indeed, his work was frequently clumsy and rough. 
Yet for the spirit that animates his poems, a spirit com- 
pounded of humility and true reverence, he is memorable 
among the religious writers of his century. Moreover, 
something of lyrical grace and something of narrative 
vigor save his verse from the lower circles of dulness. 
Whether in legends, in hymns of invocation to the saints, 
or in his gruesome moral tale De tribus Regibus Mortuis, 
he has a note of his own and an imagination that outruns 
his power of expression. 

The little we know about Audelay is due to his own 
references to himself. No less than seventeen times he 
set down his name, frequently with the addition that he 
was blind, or blind and deaf. He was, we learn, a chap- 
lain at Haghmon Abbey, a house of Augustinian Canons 
near Shrewsbury; and he himself says that he was the 
first priest of the chantry of Lord Strange at Haghmon. 
He must, it would appear, have written most of his verse 
about the year 1426, and he must have died about 1430. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION Z55 

Further than this we have no information about his 
career; we know only that he was a pious and humble 
soul who was impelled by a vision to write, and that he 
considered the Lollards enemies of God. 

The first legend that he composed seems to have been 
a rendering of the Vision of Paul, very similar in content 
to the version of the mid-fourteenth century and based 
on the same Latin original. It is, however, very different 
in manner from the earlier work which it so much re- 
sembles in content. John Audelay had the passion for 
elaborately interlaced rhymes that was characteristic of 
the generations following Chaucer, and he wrote his vision 
of the torments of Hell in twenty-eight stanzas of thirteen 
lines apiece, a form too difficult for him to manage satis- 
factorily. 

Far more interesting and important is Audelay's Salu- 
tation to Saint Bridget, which is in reality a brief life of 
the sainted Swedish princess, though formally an invo- 
cation. The poet's devotion to her was natural, since he 
was a member of an Augustinian house and Bridget had 
chosen the rule of St. Austin for her great monastery in 
Sweden. He describes the foundation by Henry V of Sion 
House, which took place in 1413, forty years after the 
saint's death. This was the only important Brigettine 
establishment in England. He adds a prayer "for young 
King Harry " the Sixth. It is noteworthy that this life of 
St. Bridget followed so soon on her canonization, which 
took place in 1391. There is no other case of the sort in 
the entire history of the English vernacular legends, the 



256 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

only instance approximating it being that of St. Guthlac 
in the eighth century. The Salutation of St. Bridget, 
which has never yet been printed, is a poem of twenty- 
three nine-line stanzas. 

More accomplished as a piece of versification is Aude- 
lay's third legend, a life of St. Wenefred in thirty four-line 
stanzas. The greater success of this piece is not to be 
ascribed, however, to any simplification of structure, 
since the poet ingeniously used the same rhyme for the 
fourth line of every stanza throughout the poem. In 
spite of the difficulties that he thus created for himself, 
he was not unsuccessful in compressing the chief points of 
the Wenefred legend into short compass. No doubt his 
special interest in the saint was due to the proximity of 
Haghmon Abbey to Holywell, where Wenefred was sup- 
posed to have been beheaded and miraculously restored 
to life. In Audelay's time pilgrims resorted thither in 
vast numbers, attracted by the spring which was said to 
mark the spot. St. Wenefred, which the author curiously 
termed a " carol, " has not yet been edited. 

We have now to consider the most celebrated legend- 
writer of the fifteenth century, John Lydgate, who was, 
as well, its most popular poet in other genres. With the 
Benedictine house of Bury St. Edmunds, of which he was 
a member, his name is inseparably connected. His literary 
career began long before that of Audelay and extended 
well beyond it, for he was born about 1370 and did not 
die until after 1446, as we know from a document of 
that year. An industrious writer, he was perhaps more 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 257 

nearly a professional poet, in the modern sense, than 
anyone else who used the English tongue before the inven- 
tion of printing. Even Chaucer, who can truthfully be 
called the "father of English poetry " in this sense at 
least, was less exclusively dependent on his art for liveli- 
hood and favor. During his long activity Lydgate com- 
posed, so Professor Schick has reckoned, more than one 
hundred and thirty thousand lines: a calculation that 
still leaves out of account everything save his major 
works. He could have had time and vigor, one must 
suppose, for little else than his poetry; and, indeed, there 
is no evidence that he was in any way prominent except 
as a poet, though he received a full measure of renown 
at the hands of his contemporaries. 

The record of his life, as far as outward events are 
concerned, is very slight. Quite possibly, however, we 
know all the essential facts and should gain little by dis- 
covering that he was in this place or that, in a particular 
year. What we need for an understanding of his career is 
a more exact chronology of his works rather than com- 
pleter annals of his life. He was born, so he tells us, at Lyd- 
gate, near Newmarket, and he seems to have been placed 
in the great abbey of Bury St. Edmunds when he was 
about fifteen years old. According to tradition, he studied 
at Oxford also, but there is no proof of it. At all events, he 
took the four minor orders of the Church in 1389, and 
was ordained priest in 1397. In 1423 he was elected prior 
of Hatfield Broadoke, otherwise Hatfield Regis. How 
successfully he discharged the duties of his office there 



258 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

we are not informed, although we are permitted to feel 
some doubts in view of the fact that in 1434 he re- 
ceived permission to return to Bury "propter frugem 
melioris vitae captandam." Meanwhile, he was in Paris 
in 1426 or thereabouts, for what purpose or for how long 
we do not know. As late as 1445 he was making verses 
for the pageants that celebrated the entry of Queen 
Margaret into London, and about a year later was men- 
tioned as living, by an admirer who sang his praises 
loudly. A record of the payment of a pension in 1446 is 
the last explicit reference to him that has been discovered. 
From the subsequent silence his death not long after is 
to be conjectured. 

Lydgate's work was divided, as Professor Schick has 
suggested, into two periods: that done before 1412, and 
the quite extraordinary amount of verse that he wrote 
after that date. This arrangement helps one understand 
his career, if it be considered as a whole. Undoubtedly 
the longer poems written before Lydgate was fifty have 
not the fluent dulness of his later translations. Yet with 
regard to his saints' lives there is little to be learned from 
such an analysis. Of the ten legends that he wrote, not 
including for the moment a poetical Calendar, only one 
can be dated before 1412; and little or no difference in 
manner can be detected, I think, between the earlier and 
the later works. It is not even important that he should 
have composed the greater number of his legends when 
he was past middle life, for most of them were done by 
command, which testifies merely to his renown. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 259 

Nevertheless, we must not fail to note that his most 
important contribution to hagiography, The Life of Our 
Lady, was written between 1409 and 1411. Professor 
Schick has established the date beyond reasonable doubt. 
This poem is a work of nearly six thousand lines, in 
rhyme royal — Chaucer's stanza, it will be remembered 
— and is divided into four books. In scope it is the 
completest life of the Virgin that has ever been made in 
English verse, embracing not only the story of the Gos- 
pels but also the apocryphal accounts of Mary's life and 
death. The sources upon which Lydgate drew for his 
material have not yet been carefully studied, and cannot 
well be until the long-promised edition by Dr. Fiedler 
is issued. But it is not for out-of-the-way stories that 
one would turn to the book; it is, rather, for the fluent 
grace with which the poet has treated an old theme. 
Whatever opinions one may hold with regard to Lyd- 
gate's talent, it is undeniable that he possessed in a 
marked degree two qualities very necessary to success in 
the writing of saints' lives. He showed, all his critics 
admit, a humility which cannot be explained as mere 
conventional self -depreciation; and he was truly rever- 
ential of spirit. These characteristics are everywhere ap- 
parent in The Life of Our Lady and give it a tone of genu- 
ine devotion. Arid it is, at times, for Lydgate was uneven 
in execution and lacked the imaginative grasp of the 
great masters of verse; but as a whole it is a noble treat- 
ment of its -subject and worthy of remembrance. Our 
Benedictine monk's dulness is often the result, I believe, 



260 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

of not too deep-seated learning, which betrayed him into 
pedantic silliness. Fluency alone does not account for his 
pages of unilluminated rhyme. In The Life of Our Lady, 
fortunately, his vein of folly was checked by his religious 
feeling; he responded to the inspiration of a subject that 
was to him a matter of sincerest concern. The Life of Our 
Lady is not so well known to modern students as are 
Lydgate's other major works, but largely because it has 
not been readily accessible. Its early popularity is at- 
tested by the number of manuscript copies that were made 
of it — nearly forty are known to be extant — as well 
as by the early prints of Caxton and Redman; and its 
popularity was deserved. 

No legend from Lydgate's pen, save the one just dis- 
cussed, can be dated earlier than 1426. Indeed, as to the 
date of St. George, which comes next in the list, we have 
no clue except that it must have been made, as Miss 
Hammond has shown, after that year. One can say of it 
without scruple and with entire justice that its sole inter- 
est lies in the fact of its existence. It does nothing more 
than rehearse in thirty stanzas (again rhyme royal) the 
commonplaces of the later legend of St. George. It was, 
however, written for the Armorers of London to be " the 
devyse of a steyned halle," in the words of a contem- 
porary copyist; and by reason of this purpose it takes on 
a value in archaeology that it does not possess as litera- 
ture. Just how such poems were used we do not yet 
know, for it is difficult to understand how two or three 
hundred lines of verse could be woven into tapestry or 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 261 

painted as descriptive comment upon pictures. Yet Lyd- 
gate composed this legend, we are told on excellent au- 
thority, "at the request of tharmorieres of Londonn for 
thonour of theyre brotherhoode and theyre feest of saint 
George." Moreover, Lydgate on at least three other oc- 
casions made verses to accompany pictorial decorations. 
The wonder is that so feeble and undramatic a work as 
this legend could have been used in such a way. 

The passion of St. Margaret, which had already in- 
spired native legend-writers — once with notable success 
— furnished Lydgate a subject perhaps more congenial 
to his taste than England's patron saint. At all events, he 
made of it a poem so good that it ranks among his best, 
and among the best legends of the fifteenth century. He 
used rhyme royal, as in most of his legends, varying the 
metrical scheme by appending a ballade. Unaffected, un- 
pretentious, and wholly undramatic, the seventy-seven 
stanzas are perfectly in keeping with the matter of the 
story. They ape no other genre, and they strain for no 
quality that is not theirs by what seems natural right. 
Lydgate often blundered, but sometimes, when he dealt 
with a theme requiring no sharp contrasts but much 
sweetness, he exhibited great literary tact. There is al- 
most nothing in St Margaret that one could wish to have 
away, and there is a good deal of genuine beauty. As 
always, Lydgate suffers from seeming more modern than 
he is: a careless reading is likely to make one think his 
work easy to understand but poetically crude. In the 
St Margaret, as elsewhere, our taste cannot well approve 



262 SAINTS* LEGENDS 

his special fondness for rhyming words of Latin or Ro- 
mance derivation; but in other respects there is little to 
find fault with in the technique of his verse. He himself 
speaks of "compiling" St. Margaret for Lady March, 
yet he seems not to have gone far afield for his material. 
The poem was based on the epitome of the saint's life in 
Legenda Aurea, and was merely a free rendering of that 
text. According to the statement of a scribe whom we 
have no reason to doubt, it was made in the eighth year 
of Henry VI, that is, between August 31, 1429, and 
August 31, 1430. 

In the same year Lydgate wrote a brief poem for a 
Christmas mumming before the King at Windsor: for 
the Christmas festivities of 1429-30. It relates an 
incident from the legend of St. Clotilda, and is un- 
distinguished save in the circumstances of its produc- 
tion. 

■ l About three years later, as we know from a reference 
to a visit of Henry VI to Bury St. Edmunds, Lydgate was 
commissioned by Abbot William to make a life of the 
East Anglian king and martyr to whom the monastery 
was dedicated. This work, which he thus began in 1433, 
must have been to Lydgate the occasion of much pride. 
It was addressed to the King and, when completed, was 
presented to him in a beautiful copy that is still preserved. 
Possibly to the humble poet's nervous dread in the ex- 
pectation of so august a reader may be attributed some 
of the faults of the St. Edmund. In contrast with the *S£. 
Margaret, it parades a show of learning that not only re- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 263 

tards the progress of the narrative but frequently becomes 
ridiculous. Although Lydgate says: — 

In Tullius gardeyn I gadrid never floures, 
Nor never slepte upon Citheroun, 

he embellished his story with every device within his 
power. But his sententious comments are clumsy, his 
learned allusions dull, his rhetoric is stilted. The good 
qualities which he shows elsewhere are so buried in ver- 
biage that the three books of the poem stretch themselves 
out wearily, in spite of an occasional graceful turn. The 
unwieldly bulk of the legend is swollen, moreover, by 
the fact that the third book is devoted to St. Edmund's 
cousin, Fremund. This device of amplification may have 
been pleasing to the royal patron, but it does not add to 
the structural excellence of the work. Again rhyme royal 
was employed, but for the most part with the fluent 
flatness that was the poet's bane. His better style is 
shown in the final address to the king. 

Sovereyn lord, plese to your goodlyheed 

And to your gracious royal magnyficence 

To take this tretys, which a-twen hope and dreed 

Presentyd ys to your hyh excellence. 

And for kyng Edmundis notable reverence 

Beth to his chyrche dyffence and champioun, 

Be-cause yt ys off your fundacioun. 

Even longer than the $2. Edmund is the life of St. 
Alban that Lydgate made in 1439, and even less success- 
ful. Again he was writing a double legend, for he followed 
the common tradition in joining the story of the shadowy 



264 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Amphibalus to the passion of England's proto-martyr. 
To Alban he devoted two books and to Amphibalus a 
third — precisely the plan he had adopted for St. Ed- 
mund. This similarity of plan may help to account for 
the inferiority of the St. Alban; it may have led him into 
a duller prolixity. He could scarcely have felt, moreover, 
the same personal interest in St. Alban as in the patron 
of his own abbey. Certainly this work of more than four 
thousand seven hundred verses, in stanzas of seven and 
eight lines, never shows any depth of feeling and never 
rises to any beauty. It was made to order, and shows it. 

In 1444, not long before his death, that is, Lydgate 
wrote the last of his legends that can be dated. It was 
composed as an appendix to St. Edmund and deals with 
the later miracles of the saint, two of them performed at 
Bury St. Edmunds itself in the very year when the verses 
were made. The Miracles of St. Edmund, however, has 
no value save as a document; Lydgate's poetical gift 
seems by this time to have deserted him utterly. His 
eight-line stanzas are strung together without art, and 
individually they have neither grace nor strength. Only 
from the fact that the miracles all concern rescues of 
little children have they much interest : it is a pleasingly 
sentimental reflection that among the last verses of the 
old monk were these, so sympathetic with childhood. 

Of the undated legends, the most considerable are a 
St. Giles and a St. Austin at Compton, both of them in the 
eight-line stanza which Lydgate used for such purposes 
in alternation with rhyme royal. Neither poem has much 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 265 

merit, although the second has some interest for the 
story of St. Augustine that it relates. It tells in summary 
fashion, but with the prolixity of introduction that was 
one of Lydgate's besetting sins, how the saint brought to 
terms a knight who refused to pay his tithes. " Dul and 
old" the poet calls himself in an envoi ; and we may pass 
over the faults of the little treatise with the remark that 
it was an undistinguished work of pious senility. The 
St. Giles bears no evidence as to its date save its excessive 
pedantry. Although it was called a translation, it is em- 
bellished by a variety of conceits and allusions that sug- 
gest a hardening of the poet's manner into mechanical 
dexterity. It was made at the instance of some patron 
who is vaguely referred to as a "creature," and it is 
clumsy both in diction and in structure. On the show- 
ing of such a work, Lydgate would merit little considera- 
tion. 

A Procession of Corpus Christi cannot strictly be termed 
a legend, for it is a running narrative of the testimony 
borne to the honor of the sacramental host from the 
earliest days to the time of Thomas Aquinas. Yet so 
closely similar is it in manner to Lydgate's saints' lives 
that it should be mentioned in connection with them. 
We have no clue as to its date; and we have not yet been 
informed whether it was based on any earlier treatise 
concerning the feast of Corpus Christi. Quite clearly it 
was intended to usher in some dramatic spectacle. It is 
brief, and comparatively simple and direct of phrasing, 
not unlike in these ways the better lyrical invocations and 



266 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

prayers to the saints, more than a dozen of which are to be 
found among Lydgate's authentic works. Another brief 
legend, $2. Petronilla, has been confidently assigned to 
the poet by Professor MacCracken in his ambitious Lyd- 
gate Canon. It may well be from his pen, and is certainly 
of his school. Further than this, in default of any external 
evidence, it is hardly safe to go with reference to a poem 
of no special worth that is but one hundred and sixty-four 
lines in length. 

To this list of Lydgate's legends is to be added a 
Calendar of holy-days throughout the year. Nothing of 
the sort had been attempted in English verse, so far as 
we know, since the Norman Conquest. The work has no 
merit as verse, but it furnishes a curious and not unin- 
teresting list of saints. Made, as the scribe of one manu- 
script puts it, " after the forme of a compote manuelle," 
it gives an accurate notion of what days were kept in a 
great monastery like Bury St. Edmunds; and, like some 
of the earlier menologies, it characterizes many of the 
saints by at least a phrase. Nevertheless, Lydgate had 
not the art of condensed statement at his command. A 
less fluent man of letters might have made a calendar at 
once more inclusive and more informing. 

During the latter part of Lydgate's life, Osbern Boke- 
nam, whose collection of legends of women saints was 
discussed in the chapter preceding this, was doing his 
work as a humble follower of the renowned Benedictine 
monk. Bokenam, in his acknowledgment of literary ob- 
ligations, mentions along with Lydgate John Capgrave, 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 267 

an Austin friar like himself, but a far more prosperous 
and successful person. 

Myn cuntre is Northfolke, of the town of Lynne, 

Capgrave says in the prologue of his most considerable 
verse legend ; and in his Chronicle of England he informs 
us that he was born on April 21, 1394. It is not known 
where he got his education, but it can safely be assumed 
that he was under the direction of the Austin friars at 
Lynn from an early age. In 1416 or 1417 he was ordained 
priest, which means that he must have progressed by 
natural and uninterrupted stages to full orders. More- 
over, he seems to have won recognition at once as a man 
of some gifts, for we find him preaching a series of sermons 
at Cambridge when he was thirty years old. Soon after 
1422 he went to Rome and there fell ill, as we know from 
the dedicatory letter of one of his Latin works; but he 
has left us no information about his subsequent career. 
That he fulfilled the promise of his youth we cannot 
doubt, however. Two deeds of 1456 show that at that 
time he bore the titles of Prior and Provincial of his 
order. Since he was at Lynn some years before that date 
it would appear that he was Prior of the Augustinian 
house at that place, while his jurisdiction as Provincial 
extended at least as far as Oxford. He died in 1464. 

From such scattering data as we possess we may infer 
that Capgrave had an active as well as successful life. 
There is no reason, moreover, for supposing that he was 
anything but an upright and high-minded man. The 



268 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

inferences of some of his editors that he was a time-serving 
bigot are based on nothing except their dissent from his 
opinions. That he violently hated Wyclif and believed 
evil of Wyclif 's followers cannot be regarded as a moral 
flaw unless one is going to demand impartial omniscience 
of all men; nor can it be imputed as a fault to a busy 
preaching friar that he did not refuse homage to Edward 
IV after having been a loyal subject of Henry VI. A con- 
sideration of what he accomplished shows that he must 
have been, indeed, a very busy non-political man. 

In addition to performing his duties as preacher and 
executive officer, he wrote one considerable historical 
work in English and two in Latin; he compiled an Eng- 
lish Guide to the Antiquities of Rome; he was the author of 
many theological treatises in Latin, most of which are 
not known to survive ; he is credited with having revised 
a large collection of Latin lives of English saints, first 
assembled by John of Tynemouth and known to us as 
Nova Legenda Angliae, though we have no certain knowl- 
edge about his connection with this undertaking; and he 
put together or translated at least five saints' lives of 
larger scope, four of them in English. In variety and 
in quantity, it will be seen, his literary production was 
somewhat remarkable for a man who did so many other 
things besides. That he had the highest talent cannot be 
asserted: it is rather as an industrious and intelligent 
worker on the borderlands between scholarship and liter- 
*ature that he deserves his measure of fame. 

Of his four saints' lives in English, the first that he 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 269 

wrote was St. Catharine of Alexandria. The date of this 
poem of epic length we do not know. It must have been 
written before 1440, when Capgrave finished (in Assump- 
tion week, he says) his St. Norbert, but how long before that 
time has not yet been determined. In any event, it must 
have been made when the author was in the full vigor of 
his active life; and it is representative both of his merits 
and of his weaknesses as a versifier. It is divided into 
five books, each of which is prefaced by a prologue of 
discursive and personal character, and it extends to 
more than eight thousand lines, all told. The metre is the 
familiar rhyme royal. St. Norbert, which is in the same 
stanza, is less than half as long as St. Catharine. The St. 
Norbert, unfortunately, has not yet been edited; and I 
must plead ignorance of its contents, save for a few 
specimen extracts. One cannot suppose, however, that it 
differs greatly in treatment from the earlier poem. Cap- 
grave wrote it for John Wygnale, Abbot of West Dereham 
in Norfolk, a Premonstratensian house, for which a life 
of the founder of the order would naturally be in request. 
What special purpose, if any, Capgrave had in writing 
the St. Catharine I do not know. In the prologue of the 
first book he tells a somewhat self -contradictory story 
about a priest named Arrek, from whose Latin version he 
pretends to have translated the work. Of Arrek we know 
nothing whatever, and are perhaps justified in feeling 
some doubts as to whether he was not a fictitious person, 
rather than the incumbent of St. Pancras' in London and 
a west-country man who died at Lynn. Certainly it is 



270 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

hard to believe that he lived for twelve years in Alex- 
andria in order to learn Greek and that he made a par- 
tial English translation of the legend as well as his Latin 
version. Capgrave must, I think, have been romancing, 
although it is scarcely safe to say so until a careful study 
has been made of his sources. The only thing one can 
be sure of at present is that his version was ultimately 
based on the pseudo-Athanasian Life of Catharine. 

Until we know more about his sources, indeed, it is 
difficult to form an adequate estimate of Capgrave's per- 
formance as a whole. Yet it is clear that he must have 
treated his materials with a good deal of freedom, and 
that the work as it stands is Capgrave's own. That it is 
of tedious length no reader of it would deny. The most 
successful versions of the Catharine legend are those in 
which the harangues and arguments of the saint have 
been cut down; and more than half of Capgrave's fourth 
book is devoted to her debate with the philosophers. He 
had not the power of seizing the great moments of a 
story in epic fashion and subordinating unnecessary de- 
tail. On the other hand, the movement of events is 
straightforward and, in itself, good. The most interesting 
of the five books is certainly the third, which tells of the 
saint's conversion through the hermit Adrian, of her bap- 
tism, and of her mystic espousal by Christ. Here the 
tedium of the narrative is lifted into warmth and light: 
the dull plodding of the stanzas ceases for a time to dis- 
tract the reader, as the glories of the Christian message 
are revealed to the high-born maiden. Capgrave was 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 271 

never without metrical fluency and a personal style in 
verse that marks a degree of mastery. His tendency to 
run on the thought from stanza to stanza, often ending 
a sentence with the first or second line of the new stanza, 
helps to weave the narrative into consistency. Were it 
not that his facility leads him into prosiness, and that he 
often overloads his verse with learned references in the 
fashion of his day, he would be a poet in whom one could 
take real delight. Occasionally, by apt homely allusions 
or by descriptions such as that of Maxentius' gods in the 
fourth book, he recalls Chaucer. The pity is the greater 
that he never learned to curb his pen and to give the 
individual moments of his narrative higher intensity. 

An account of Capgrave's two legends in prose may be 
deferred for a little until we have examined the few re- 
maining saints' lives in verse that the century produced. 
First of them should be mentioned a St. Dorothy, which 
was the work either of Capgrave himself or of some writer 
who had been influenced by him and who was of his 
region. This St. Dorothy, a poem of three hundred and 
forty-four verses in eight-line stanzas, is known from two 
manuscripts, one of which (Arundel 168) contains also a 
copy of Capgrave's Catharine. It is not assigned to Cap- 
grave by the scribes; but it recalls his work in style, and 
it has such of his linguistic peculiarities as can be certified 
by rhyme. On these accounts I am inclined, though hes- 
itatingly, to believe that it should be attributed to him. 
However, it can neither make nor mar his reputation, for 
it is an undistinguished translation of the vulgate Latin 



272 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

text published in the appendix of Legenda Aurea, and 
has no striking characteristics of any kind. In content it 
differs very slightly from Bokenam's verse translation of 
the same Latin text. 

In another very brief legend of the period, an account 
in rhymed couplets of the martyrdom of St. Erasmus, 
with an or alio to the saint, can be traced the influence 
of Lydgate, though it is scarcely the work of Lydgate 
himself. Except as evidence that the martyred Bishop 
of Formise was reverenced in England at the time, a fact 
made clearer by the existence of our verse legend in two 
slightly different redactions, this St. Erasmus has no im- 
portance. 

Later than this, from about the middle of the century 
onwards to the Reformation, only six saints' lives in 
verse were composed, so far as I know. To nothing else 
than the disturbances consequent upon the Wars of the 
Roses can I attribute this sudden cessation of activity in 
a field that had been so popular, though I am conscious 
that the explanation, in view of the fact that prose leg- 
ends continued to be written, is not wholly adequate. Cu- 
riously enough, the six works to which I have alluded 
were all local legends. For this phenomenon I can see no 
reason : I can but set down the fact. 

About the middle of the century was written The Holy 
Blood of Hales, which recounts how an unnamed Jew 
(Joseph of Arimathea, of course) preserved some of 
Christ's blood and was imprisoned with it till the coming 
of Titus and Vespasian. By them it was taken with other 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 273 

relics to Rome, whence half of it was removed by Charle- 
magne to Treves. There it was found by Earl Edmund 
of Cornwall, whose father Richard was King of the 
Romans from 1257 to 1259, and a portion of it brought 
to England. In 1270 the earl gave it to the Abbey of 
Hales, or Hales-Owen, in Shropshire, a Premonstraten- 
sian house founded by King John. The writer testified 
that "plentious" miracles were still performed at the 
shrine in his day, and he avowedly wrote to combat the 
doubts that had been raised as to the authenticity of the 
relic. He told his story in one hundred quatrains with 
alternate rhymes, and he was wholly without poetical 
gifts. Nevertheless, the legend has considerable docu- 
mentary value, for accounts of such shrines in mediaeval 
England are all too few. Dr. Horstmann, who published 
the text, doubtfully ascribed it to the dialect of Cornwall, 
though for no reason that I can discover save that Ed- 
mund took his title from that county. Indeed, the legend 
seems to have been written in the West-Midland district, 
perhaps not far from Hales itself. That it was the work of 
a monk of that abbey cannot, however, be supposed, else 
the author would not refer to Hales as " there" instead 
of "here." He was, according to his own statement, 
translating from Latin : apparently from such a text as is 
to be found in an inedited manuscript of Trinity College, 
Cambridge (B.15. 30). How accurately he reproduced 
his original still awaits investigation. 

Of even greater interest as a document than The Holy 
Blood is the double legend of St. Wulfhad and St. Ruffin, 



274 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

which was made in Staffordshire at about the same time. 
It is in a clumsy adaptation of the alliterative metre, at 
times rhyming in pairs, and it makes no pretences to 
literary style. Its value consists simply in the fact that 
it was written or painted upon a "table," on the epistle 
side of the choir in the church at Stone Priory, a Car- 
thusian house of some importance. It is known to us 
solely through one of the Cottonian manuscripts, and the 
beginning of it is almost illegible. By a curious chance, 
another inscription from the gospel side of the choir, 
which recounted the foundation of the monastery and 
named its benefactors down to the time of Henry IV, 
has also been preserved and can be read in Dugdale's 
Monasticon. The statement is there made that this 
second set of verses was hanging " in the Priorie of Stone, 
at the time of the Suppression of the same." Limita- 
tions of space do not permit me to give the evidence 
here; but these two inscriptions, by a double chance thus 
known to us, actually refer to one another and indisput- 
ably were the work of the same author. Whether they 
were hung in the choir itself or in the ambulatory is not 
clear to me, but it is certain that they were so placed as 
to be easily read by worshippers in the church. As the 
legend consists of three hundred and eighty-two lines, and 
the history of the foundation runs to one hundred and 
sixty-two, the tablets on which they were inscribed must 
have been of considerable size. Taken in connection with 
Lydgate's poems for pictorial decorations, they furnish 
evidence as to English fashions of mural display that is 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 275 

very important. Indeed, the manner of their use at Stone 
Priory is much clearer than that of Lydgate's verses. 
The rhymed legend has, it should be added, no inde- 
pendent value for the lives of St. Wulfhad and St. Ruffin, 
since the author of it certainly had before him an ornate 
Latin passio that is still extant. The two saints were 
Mercian princes of the seventh century, brothers of St. 
Werburghe, converts of St. Chad, and martyrs for the 
faith. 

Better known, at least to students of Middle Eng- 
lish, than the legends just treated, are the lives of St. 
Editha and St. Etheldreda which have been thought to 
date from the beginning of the century. They were un- 
doubtedly written in the dialect of Wiltshire; and quite 
possibly they were the work of the same author, since 
there are no appreciable linguistic differences between 
them and since the prolix manner of their compilation is 
similar. St. Editha was daughter of Edgar, King of Wes- 
sex in the second half of the tenth century, and won 
great repute for sanctity by her life as a nun at Wilton. 
The fifteenth century legend includes, in point of fact, 
not only her life and miracles, but a history of Wilton 
Priory and an account of the West Saxon kings from 
Egbert onwards. Considerations of space never troubled 
the author, who introduced, for example, the entire story 
of the German Dance of Death as preface to a recital of 
the healing of one of the dancers at the shrine of St. 
Edith. By such means he expanded his somewhat sprawl- 
ing work to nearly five thousand lines, not to mention a 



276 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

considerable section now lost. The St. Etheldreda, which 
is also preserved incompletely, is a shorter work: we 
have of it somewhat more than eleven hundred verses. 
It includes, however, an account of the Anglo-Saxon hep- 
tarchy and many genealogical details about the East- 
Anglian royal house to which belonged St. Audrey, the 
foundress of Ely. The writer had access, as he stated, to 
local records, just as did the compiler of St. Editha : a 
fact that gives both legends a certain corroborative his- 
torical value. A careful study of them from this point 
of view is much to be desired. 

Even more necessary, I believe, is a thoroughgoing in- 
vestigation of the date at which they were written, the 
more urgently necessary because linguistic students are 
accustomed to use them as examples of Wiltshire dialect at 
the very beginning of the fifteenth century. That this was 
their actual date seems to me quite impossible. Towards 
the end of St. Editha (vv. 4970-72) the author remarked 
that he was using a record of the saint's miracles made 
three hundred and forty years before. The latest miracle 
to which he could refer must have taken place during 
the reign of Henry I, who ruled from 1100 to 1135. This 
evidence, which is certainly more weighty than that pre- 
sented by Dr. Horstmann and Professor Heuser, would 
bring the legend down to about 1450 at the very earliest. 
However, a more elaborate study of the problem than I 
have as yet been able to make must be carried through 
before we can be certain just when these crude but inter- 
esting documents were written. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 277 

At the very end of the century — in 1497, he tells us — 
Laurentius Wade produced a life of St. Thomas of Can- 
terbury. He was a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, 
and had thus the impulse of local tradition for his work. 
He did not, however, add anything to the biography of 
Becket, but was content to follow the narrative of Her- 
bert of Bosham, piecing it out with a few brief excerpts 
from the life by John Grandison of Exeter. In only one 
respect did he make of his material anything but the 
baldest translation : he moralized in the manner of Lyd- 
gate and Capgrave. Indeed, the legend is a late example 
of their manner, a sporadic echo after silence had for 
some decades fallen upon the makers of lives of saints in 
verse. It remains to add that this valueless work consists 
of three hundred and twenty-nine seven-line stanzas, 
arranged like rhyme royal but substituting an adapta- 
tion of the native four-beat line for the normal one of 
five accents. 

The same curious metre was used, but more effec- 
tively, by Henry Bradshaw, a Benedictine of Chester, 
in a Life of St. Werburghe, which he wrote in 1513. 
Bradshaw, of whose life we know little, is said to have 
been educated in theology at Gloucester College, Ox- 
ford, but to have passed most of his days in St. Wer- 
burghe's monastery at Chester. He was also the author 
of a Latin work, De Antiquitate et Magnificentia Urbis 
Chestria? Chronicon, and may have written a life of St. 
Radegunde in English, though the latter possibility rests 
upon the casual attribution by the gentleman who owned 



278 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the unique copy of the legend some sixty years ago. 
The St. Werburghe is known to us through Pynson's 
edition of 1521. According to a prologue in acrostic verse 
and to two appended poems, Henry Bradshaw must have 
died in the very year in which he completed his magnum 
opus. The praise of his friends is somewhat fulsome, yet 
a modicum of it cannot be denied his poem. He was 
the last writer of verse legends before the Reforma- 
tion, and he was not altogether unworthy to close the 
series. 

The Life of St. Werburghe is, in reality, more than the 
title indicates : it contains genealogies of the Old English 
royal houses, brief lives of St. Audrey and St. Sexburga, a 
history of Chester down to the end of the twelfth century, 
and accounts of various miracles done through the merits 
of Chester's patron saint. These mixed materials Brad- 
shaw derived both from saints' lives and from chronicles. 
For Werburghe 's own career and her miracles he relied 
on what he called " the thrid Passionary," "which boke 
remayneth in Chester monastery"; but he quoted also 
Bede, Henry of Huntington, William of Malmesbury, 
Giraldus Cambrensis, Alfred of Beverley, and Higden's 
Polychronicon. He was, it will be seen, a somewhat 
learned man; and, since part of his legendary sources are 
not now known to exist, he gave his work more than a 
little documentary value. As to form, he was less adept. 
Although he exclaims : — 

What were mankynde without lytterature? 
Full lytell worthy blynded by ignoraunce, 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 279 

he had little power of co-ordinating diverse matters into 
unity. He was writing 

To the comyn vulgares theyr mynde to satysfy, 

and he plodded methodically through the task with no 
thought of architectonics. Yet his poem is not without 
interest and value as a narrative. The verse, at first 
stiff and awkward, grows more supple as the work pro- 
ceeds, while the monk's visual imagination gives pas- 
sages like those describing Werburghe's entrance on con- 
ventual life at Ely, and the translation of her relics to 
Chester, a brilliancy that one would not expect from the 
duller parts of the history. As a whole, when once the 
historical introduction is passed, the two books of the 
poem can be read with considerable pleasure as well as 
profit. Through five thousand five hundred and sixty-five 
lines one is carried not uncomfortably, becoming increas- 
ingly conscious, the while, of the swinging rhythm in a 
verse to which it is very difficult for the modern ear to 
adjust itself. To show Bradshaw's descriptive powers, it 
is perhaps worth while to quote one stanza concerning 
the royal feast at Ely when Werburghe was received as 
probationer. 

The tables were covered with clothes of Dyaper, 
Rychely enlarged with sylver and with golde; 
The cupborde with plate shynynge fayre and clere. 
Marshalles theyr offyces fulfylled manyfolde. 
Of myghty wyne plenty bothe newe and olde, 
All-maner kynde of meetes delycate 
(When grace was sayd) to them was preparate. 



280 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

As has been said, the practice of writing saints' lives 
in English prose fell into disuse at the beginning of the 
thirteenth century and was not revived until Chaucer's 
later years. Except for two or three works, indeed, to 
which I shall immediately refer, all the later Middle Eng- 
lish legends in prose, as far as known to us, can be ascribed 
to the fifteenth century. More exact dating with regard 
to some of them is impossible, for the present at least, 
though a division can be made between those produced 
during the first and during the second half of the century. 
John Mirk's Festial, it will be remembered, was compiled 
before 1415. Although some few of these fifteenth century 
legends have great interest either as hagiographical docu- 
ments or as examples of the prose style that was forming 
itself in that era, they were for the most part mere trans- 
lations, and translations not very happily performed. As 
a body of work, their importance lies in their illustrating 
in a new way the yet unfailing appeal of saints' lives 
to the reading public. 

The most notable instance of a prose legend from the 
fourteenth century is the Gospel of Nicodemus. To the 
studies of Professor W. H. Hulme in this field we are 
indebted for most of the information that we possess. He 
has shown that of seven apparently independent prose 
translations of the ever-popular work two were made be- 
fore the fifteenth century came in. One of these was from 
the pen of the otherwise celebrated John of Trevisa, the 
translator of Higden's Polychronicon and Bartholomew of 
Glan vine's De Proprietatibus Rerum ; and was probably 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 281 

done at some time between 1385 and 1400. It was under- 
taken at the request of Lord Berkeley, to whom Trevisa 
was chaplain. The translator of the other fourteenth cen- 
tury version seems to have been, like Trevisa, from a 
southern county. He appears to have been interested 
only in the portion of the gospel that dealt with Joseph 
of Arimathea, unless, indeed, the unique manuscript mis- 
leads us. 

During the first half of the fifteenth century, the work 
was translated again, but again only in so far as it dealt 
with the story of Joseph. During the second half of the 
century, however, two complete translations were made 
independently, one of which (in MS. Harl. 149) is con- 
sidered by Professor Hulme to be the most readable of 
them all. It is possible that the sixth version of the gospel, 
which is only a fragment, was not made until the begin- 
ning of the sixteenth century, at about the same time 
with the seventh. This last translation was the one that 
found its way into print. It was issued as early as 1507, 
and for two centuries remained the popular account of 
the apocryphal story of Christ's passion and descent into 
Hell. Wynkyn de Worde alone published it five times 
between 1509 and 1532. Because of its long-continued 
history and the consequent influence that it must have 
had in forming the notions of English writers, it has great 
importance, the more so that it seems to have been 
based on a Latin text different from any yet discovered. 
It purports to be translated from French, as a matter 
of fact, but from the French of Bishop Turpin! For a 



282 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

solution of this and of many other puzzles we must await 
the publication by Professor Hulme 1 of these Middle 
English versions, and by Professor von Dobschutz of his 
new edition of the Evangelium Nicodemi. 

Aside from the earlier translations of the Gospel of 
Nicodemus, a Life of Adam and Eve in the Vernon MS. 
was also a work of the closing years of the fourteenth 
century. It was made, or at least is preserved to us, in 
the dialect of the South, and is a brief rendering of the 
Latin Vita Ada? et Evw that had already been done into 
English verse. It has traces, moreover, of the story of the 
cross-wood. In the style of this unambitious and un- 
adorned rendering of the legend there is much to com- 
mend. The anonymous writer succeeded in getting the 
same effect of easy conversational prose that is charac- 
teristic of Wyclif and John of Trevisa. Perhaps it was 
because, like them, he was untroubled by rhetoric. 

The same praise can scarcely be given to The Three 
Kings of Cologne, an abridged translation of John of 
Hildesheim's Historia Trium Regum, which was made 
about 1400. In other respects than style, however, The 
Three Kings is a most interesting work. John of Hildes- 
heim's book, which he compiled in Latin shortly before 
1375, represented the culmination of popular interest in 
the legend and incorporated a great mass of tradition. 
The wide success that it won was merited by the circum- 
stantial air with which it invested a variety of curious 

1 There is a prose St. Catharine in MS. Stonyhurst College, B. xliii, 
referred to by Professor Hulme, which deserves investigation. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 283 

and fabulous stories, while the information that it gave 
about the Orient, though far from accurate, must have 
been captivating indeed to the age of Mandeville. The 
English translator, who probably lived in the South 
Midland district, was able, though a clumsy writer, to 
give his readers all the essential qualities of the work; 
and his translation had a corresponding popularity. The 
extent to which the book was read is attested by the 
number of fifteenth century manuscripts, more or less 
shortened or extended, in which it is found, and also by 
the fact that at least five prints were made of it between 
1499 and 1530. 

The tendency of early fifteenth century writers, even 
when they used English without any skill whatsoever, to 
make new works by translating excerpts from various 
Latin ones, is illustrated by a prose St. Anthony of Egypt. 
The vita was taken from Evagrius; the invention and 
the first translation of Anthony's relics were culled from 
Jerome's rendering of a Greek original by Theophilus of 
Constantinople; while the second translation was from 
still another book. The West Midland author of the 
English prose version had no style: his work is both 
clumsy and dull. Yet it has its importance, as several 
such documents do, from the fact that one section of it 
was based, like a French translation of about the same 
period, on a text of Jerome not now accessible. Profes- 
sor Holthausen has made this clear with reference to the 
St. Anthony. 

The literature of visions likewise made its way into 



284 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

prose at this time. Shortly after 1409, as it appears, 
William Staunton, a native of Durham, wrote a new 
version of $2. Patrick's Purgatory. As Professor Krapp 
showed in his edition of this interesting document, it is 
impossible to discover that the writer copied the earlier 
accounts of the vision in any immediate way : he gave the 
story as it had been modified by the generations through 
which it had been orally transmitted. He was, indeed, 
a plain man who wrote merely to set down certain inter- 
esting facts, regardless of the stubborn nature of language. 
In the same fashion, two unpublished Visions of St 
Bridget are business-like translations from Latin rather 
than works of literary pretension. Later in the century 
there was made a complete version of the celebrated 
Vision of a Monk of Eynsham, a black-letter print of which 
was issued about 1482. Throughout the century the cur- 
rent of vision-literature thus held its course in prose; and 
it will be remembered that visions are also found in verse 
from the earlier part of the Middle English period. 

Two of the most interesting prose legends of the entire 
century were the two from the pen of John Capgrave, 
whose poetical work has already been considered. These 
prose lives were St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Gilbert of 
Sempringham. The second of them was dated 1451; and 
since it was undertaken for Nicholas Reysby, "Master 
of the Order of Sempringham," because of his favorable 
notice of the St. Augustine, we may suppose that the 
earlier work had not long been completed before the 
later was begun. Thus they stand at the very middle of 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 285 

the century, and they are as representative of the time 
as of the author. It must be said of them, I think, that 
they are more interesting than Capgrave's legends in 
verse, probably because of the greater simplicity with 
which he handled prose. He was not tempted to garnish 
it with fine flowers to show his learning; he would scarcely 
have thought of making it an exercise in fluent rhetoric. 
As a result, he wrote plainly and forcibly, yet not without 
the graceful dignity characteristic of the best fifteenth 
century prose. Although he was sometimes translating 
quite literally a Latin text, the success of his style can- 
not be attributed to that fact. It was probably due, 
rather, to having his ear attuned to the rhythms of good 
Latin, which he transferred intelligently to English 
speech. 

For the St. Augustine we know no Latin source. Cap- 
grave, who speaks of himself in his preface as " a man 
sumwhat endewid in lettirur," says that he was asked 
by an unnamed gentlewoman to write the life, " that is to 
sey, to translate hir treuly oute of Latyn." If it be true 
that a Vita S. Augustini is among his lost Latin works, 
I see no reason for not supposing that he may have been 
translating his own production. From the fact that he did 
not allude to it, the editor of the prose lives, Mr. J. J. 
Munro, thinks such a relationship improbable; but to 
me this is not weighty evidence. As Mr. Munro points 
out, Capgrave seems throughout the St. Augustine to be 
handling his material without the restrictions by which 
any translator is bound. In the case of the St. Gilbert 



286 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

he followed the standard Latin life rather literally, 
adding, however, some things "which men of that ordre 
have told me, and eke othir thingis that schul falle to 
my mynde in the writyng." This work thus possesses a 
certain independent value, though a restricted one, for 
the history of the establishment, in the twelfth century, 
of the only monastic order founded in mediaeval England. 

At about the time when Capgrave was making his 
prose legends, another East Midland writer was translat- 
ing the life of Mary Magdalene from the Legenda Aurea. 
It will be recalled that a complete prose rendering of 
Legenda Aurea, afterwards popularized by Caxton, was 
made in 1438; but this isolated life of the Magdalene 
seems to have been independently translated, from the 
French form of the book. At least, I see no reason to 
question Zupitza's conclusion that such was the case. 
Though an adequate version, it has not the charm of 
Caxton's; and its sole interest is as an illustration of the 
way in which, in an age of manuscripts, the journeyman 
work of literature was frequently repeated because of 
the difficulty in finding out what had been already done. 
The service of the printing-press in this particular is sel- 
dom fully realized. 

Of somewhat uncertain date are three independent 
translations of the passion of St. Dorothea, which illus- 
trate even more forcibly the waste of effort just men- 
tioned. By a detailed study of their content, Dr. J. M. 
Peterson has shown that they were based on two slightly 
different Latin texts, though their variations are not con- 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 287 

siderable. Indeed, they differ only in minor details from 
one another, from Osbern Bokenam's legend, and from 
the poetical version that I have tentatively ascribed to 
Capgrave. Until the later forms of the Latin legend have 
been submitted to a searching analysis, it will be impos- 
sible to straighten out the tangle of these five transla- 
tions in fifteenth century English. In this connection, the 
necessity for a completer knowledge of the textual history 
of Legenda Aurea, and for a more inclusive text than that 
found in Graesse's famous edition, may well be called to 
the attention of scholars. Hagiological studies in all the 
vernacular literatures of Europe are hampered by our 
ignorance with reference to the great Latin thesaurus of 
legend. 

A prose life of St. Jerome is included in a manuscript 
containing one of the prose versions of St. Dorothea, and 
presumably was made at about the same time. The 
writer, like Capgrave and the author of the anonymous 
St. Anthony from the earlier part of the century, was 
compiler as well as translator. His first chapter he made 
up of extracts from Legenda Aurea, and the remainder of 
his rather long work from the correspondence falsely 
attributed to St. Augustine and St. Cyril of Jerusalem. 
Although sufficiently faithful to his original while trans- 
lating, he thus produced what was virtually a new work, 
omitting, abbreviating, arranging. From the point of 
view of fifteenth century literature, at least, the book has 
value: it is readable, and it shows what the men of that 
day cared to read. 



288 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Quite possibly the translator of this prose St. Jerome 
was an Oxonian contemporary of Capgrave's, Thomas 
Gascoigne, a scholar whose virtues and learning were not 
lessened by his amusing egotism; a vehement opponent 
of the Wyclifites, who yet on his own account attacked 
abuses in the Church unsparingly; and altogether one of 
the most interesting figures of his day. He was born in 
1403 and died in 1458; and, though he held at one time 
or another various ecclesiastical preferments, he passed 
nearly all his working years at Oriel College. He wrote, 
we know, a Life of St. Jerome, of which some inedited 
fragments remain in the library of Magdalen College, — 
perhaps the same manuscript of the work that Leland 
once saw at Oseney Abbey. He also translated for the 
sisters of the Brigettine house of Sion, Islesworth, a Life 
of St. Bridget of Sweden, which is supposed to be the one 
printed by Pynson in 1516. The similarity in language 
and style between the St. Jerome that has been edited 
and the St. Bridget printed by Pynson makes the theory 
that both of them were done by Gascoigne very plausi- 
ble. The St. Bridget is certainly one of the best pieces 
of prose translation from its time, and not to be regarded 
wholly with condescension by ours. To Gascoigne has 
sometimes been attributed also a Life of St. Catharine, 
the daughter of St. Bridget of Sweden; but erroneously, 
as the inedited manuscript of the work (Digby 172) ex- 
pressly states. It cannot, however, have been made much 
later than his day. I regret that I have as yet had no 
opportunity to read this legend. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 289 

In another manuscript of the time, which once be- 
longed to the Priory of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire, 
are found lives of four women saints, all of them cele- 
brated as mystics. Since a single anonymous " compilour " 
was responsible for the form of all four, they might al- 
most be classed among collections; yet their interest is 
individual, and their sources are various. The translator 
excuses himself for writing " umwhile sotheren, othere- 
while northen," but gives no further information about 
his work save that he did it at the command of his prior. 
Presumably he was himself a monk of Beauvale. 

The life of St. Elizabeth of Spalbeck was faithfully trans- 
lated, though with some abridgment, from the Latin of 
Philip of Clair vaux. Philip encountered the saint during 
official visitations of the Cistercian abbey near her home, 
and investigated her case with a seemingly impartial 
mind. Elizabeth of Spalbeck, or of Erkenrode as she is 
more commonly termed, was a Belgian ecstatic of the most 
pronounced type, subject to seizures at the celebration 
of the hours and of the mass, and bearing the stigmata. 
Like Elizabeth was the more celebrated Christina Mi- 
rabilis, a Belgian of the same century, whose life was taken 
from the Vita by Thomas Chantimpre, the Dominican. 
No more extraordinary manifestations of mystical fervor 
have ever been set down than those recorded in this life, 
for which Thomas says he got the information from eye- 
witnesses. Christina was resuscitated after being thought 
dead, and was subsequently tormented in a hundred 
ways, being permitted to suffer Purgatory in this life. 



290 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

She is reported to have cast herself into hot fires and 
boiling cauldrons, for example, without injury, though 
she suffered frightful agonies at the time. At length 
her body became so "subtile" that she could hang on 
the smallest twigs of trees. The life of St. Mary of 
Oignies, freely translated from the account of Cardinal 
Jacques de Vitry, which was written in 1215, two years 
after the saint's death, is a less extravagant record. 
Jacques de Vitry was her confessor and, as there is every 
reason to believe, a conscientious biographer. St. Mary 
of Oignies was a mystic of pronounced type but not, 
like Elizabeth and Christina, open to the suspicion of 
nervous disorder. In the sketch of St. Catharine of Siena, 
which was translated from a letter by the Carthusian 
Stephen of Siena, there is found an even nobler picture 
of religious exaltation. Something of the grace and 
humor with which Stephen's account is touched was 
preserved by the fifteenth century translator. Of the 
four lives, the most deserving of praise is this, largely 
because it describes one of the most extraordinary and 
admirable figures of the Middle Ages. 

The interest that William Caxton took in saints' lives 
has already been shown by reference to his editions of 
Lydgate's Life of Our Lady, John Mirk's Festial, and the 
Golden Legend. Other manifestations of his activity were 
prose lives of St. Wenefred, "reduced" by him about 
1485, and a translation of Raymond of Capua's life of 
St. Catharine of Siena, which was issued from his shop, 
but probably not until a little after his death, under the 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 291 

direction of Wynkyn de Worde. Reprints of both we 
owe to Dr. Horstmann. The former was perhaps based 
on the Latin legend written by Prior Robert of Shrews- 
bury about 1140, but it shows the freedom with which 
Caxton was accustomed to treat a text. It is, indeed, 
a good example of the style familiar to readers of his 
translations: easy of flow, ready of diction, natural of 
construction. Its unaffected simplicity, no less than the 
richness of the narrative, makes it one of the best exam- 
ples of fifteenth century prose. Caxton and Wynkyn 
de Worde were less fortunate in their edition of St. 
Catharine of Siena, which was a rather thin and con- 
fused translation, scarcely worthy of perpetuation. Pos- 
sibly they may have recognized these defects, for little 
pains could have gone to the making of their very im- 
perfect print. 

Wynkyn de Worde, as Caxton's successor, made the 
issuing of saints' lives a not unimportant part of his work. 
To him we owe not only the Nova Legenda Angliw and a 
prose version in English of St. Ursula and the Eleven 
Thousand Virgins, but The Lyfe of St. Brandan from the 
Golden Legend. Of the English hagiographical works that 
he printed perhaps the most interesting, however, was The 
MartUoge in Englysshe after the Use of the chirche of Salis- 
bury and as it is redde in Syon With addicyons, which he 
put forth in 1526. This translation of the martyr ology 
of the Brigettine monastery of Sion, Isles worth, was the 
work of Richard Whitford, a brother of the house, and 
was made for the edification of the unlearned members 



292 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

of the establishment "that dayly dyd rede the same 
martiloge in latyn not understandynge what they redde." 
Not contented, however, with translating his original, 
Whitford made very large additions, of no liturgical au- 
thority, from such standard books as the Legenda Aurea 
and the Catalogus Sanctorum by Petrus de Natalibus. 
He thus doubled the size of the compilation and made 
it an extensive, though not authoritative, sanctilogium, 
which has still its value as a work of reference. 

From the presses of Pynson and Redman, likewise, 
books of legends were issued, some of which we have 
noticed. Yet printing could not keep saints' lives as a 
literary type from decay. By the end of the fifteenth 
century, the writing of legends had virtually ceased — in 
prose as in verse. During the entire Middle English 
period the genre had been singularly responsive to the 
tendencies, political and literary, that marked the cen- 
turies; and it was responsive to the end. The approach of 
the Reformation must have been felt as the sixteenth 
century began. One of the portents, indeed, was this 
somewhat sudden cessation in the activities of legend- 
writers. The type had flourished with the Middle Ages. 
With the close of the era it fell into decay; or, to speak 
with greater accuracy, the springs of it were dried up. 
The faith of believers was not quenched, but the majority 
of them in England were never again to find help and 
inspiration in the records of the martyrs and confessors 
of the past. For the Protestant majority that source of 
profit ceased to exist except as a by-word and a scorn. 



THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 293 

And with the change of religious attitude towards the 
saints, saintly biography as a major type perished. 
Henceforward, in English literature, it was destined to 
be a sporadic and, for the most part, a feeble growth, 
vitalized among Protestants only by romantic interest 
or by scholarly enthusiasm, while among Catholics it 
shared the obscurity to which they were doomed for more 
than two centuries and a half. 




CHAPTER VIII 
SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 

|N order to review the part taken by saints' 
lives in English drama, it is necessary for us 
to retrace some of our steps in the mediaeval 
| period; indeed, so fragmentary are our rec- 
ords of such representations that isolated treatment of 
them is inevitable. Almost without exception the saints' 
plays of the Middle Ages, strictly speaking, have per- 
ished. It is only by gathering together scattered refer- 
ences to their performance that one can form even an 
approximately accurate judgment as to their qualities 
and their influence. Thus they cannot well be treated 
along with other manifestations of the type; they must 
be separately considered. 

The extent to which they were written and performed 
is usually underestimated, partly because they have been 
lost and partly because several great cycles of plays based 
on biblical narrative have survived. Upon these cycles 
and upon the liturgical origins of the drama the atten- 
tion of scholars has, quite naturally and properly, been 
centred, because through them the development of the 
popular drama can be most conveniently traced. It is 
unfortunate, however, that the impression should be 
prevalent, as I fear is the case, that saints' lives were not 



SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 295 

very often dramatized during the period when miracle 
plays flourished. The evidence is, we shall see, that 
from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries such subjects 
were frequently chosen for popular representation^ De- 
veloping from the ritual of the Church as it did, the cyclic 
drama was in the nature of things chiefly composed of 
biblical material; but this did not satisfy the dramatic 
appetite of the public, which found other subjects to its 
liking in the ever popular lives of saints. jThus during 
the centuries when legends were most cultivated for reci- 
tation and reading, they were most often turned to ac- 
count as material for drama. I, If it seems strange that we 
have no more records of these plays than we possess, 
and almost no texts, let the devastating vandalism of 
the Reformation not be forgotten: whatever pertained 
to the saints was peculiarly liable to destruction in the 
general pillage that wrecked so many libraries. 

It is certainly noteworthy that the earliest reference to 
a play in England should be the St. Catharine that Geof- 
frey, a Norman clerk, prepared for the school of St. Albans. 
Matthew Paris records that Geoffrey borrowed certain 
copes for the performance, which were burned with his 
house at Dunstable, Bedfordshire. This must have been 
in the earlier years of the twelfth century, since Geoffrey 
became a monk on account of his misfortune, and was 
made abbot of St. Albans in 1119. This school play must, 
of course, have been in Latin, but its existence shows 
plainly that in England, as in France, dramas based on 
the lives of saints were customary from a very early date. 



296 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

What the plays were like, that William Fitzstephen 
alluded to in the preface to his Vita of St. Thomas 
Becket, we do not know : merely that London in his time 
had "representations of miracles which holy confessors 
have done, or representations of the passions in which 
the constancy of martyrs has shone forth." Whether or 
not they were in Latin, which seems unlikely since they 
were for popular representation, the record makes clearer 
the fact that saints' plays were not unknown in England 
before the rise of the dramatic cycles. William Fitzste- 
phen died at some time between 1170 and 1182. 

There is no further record of dramatic performances 
based on saints' lives, as far as I know, until the four- 
teenth century. This, however, is by no means satis- 
factory evidence that such plays were not presented. 
Information as to the drama in thirteenth century Eng- 
land is almost wholly lacking. Not until the proces- 
sional cycles came into existence, soon after the estab- 
lishment, in 1311, of the feast of Corpus Christi, does 
the record become in any respect adequate. Indeed, 
though we can justly refer the authorship of the sur- 
viving texts to the fourteenth century, most of the refer- 
ences to performances that have come to light are from 
the fifteenth or the early sixteenth century. In these 
circumstances one must take for granted that saints' 
plays, like other plays, developed during a period con- 
cerning which we have very little dramatic knowledge. 
We must consider them as they were after secularization 
was well-nigh complete and drama had become, for the 



SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 297 

most part, the cherished plaything of guilds and town 
councils. 

Altogether, the lives of about twenty-five saints are 
known to have been dramatized before the Reformation, 
and some of them several times over. Since we have re- 
maining to us from this period, aside from the cyclic 
miracles and scattering works of similar content, only 
three dramas of the legendary type, we can get our surest 
knowledge of the general scope of such plays from a 
study of subjects and of representations. Let us first see 
what can be learned from the list of non-existent saints* 
plays. 

This list, which can be made up only through the 
somewhat casual references of account-books and muni- 
cipal or monastic records, is necessarily very far from 
complete. The extant allusions to such matters are so 
scattered as to make an exhaustive search for them al- 
most impossible; and the loss of documents by various 
means has been so great that it is difficult, on the basis 
of survivals, to estimate the extent to which saints' plays 
may have been cultivated. Yet there is safety in sup- 
posing that the records we possess represent in a general 
way the subjects chosen for such dramas, and to a some- 
what less degree their comparative popularity. 

Of the saints' legends so treated nearly all were stock 
subjects of narrative in verse and prose. Naturally 
enough, the authors of such representations took stories 
about which some knowledge on the part of the audiences 
could be presupposed. Thus the names encountered in 



298 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the records are familiar ones, and are frequently re- 
peated. Mediaeval drama, though its primary purpose 
may have been instruction, could not well present ideas 
or incidents that would be hard for a jostling crew of 
citizens and rustics to grasp. St. George, St. Catharine, 
St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. Margaret, St. Lawrence 
— such names as these show the kind of material de- 
manded by the conditions. Of them all, St. George 
seems to have been the most popular, at least after the 
middle of the fifteenth century. Of the eight towns 
where we know that his legend was dramatically pre- 
sented, only Norwich seems to have celebrated him 
earlier than 1450; at Norwich a "riding" on St. George's 
Day, presumably with a play about the saint, was held 
from 1408 on. This increasing vogue as a subject for dra- 
matic spectacles accompanied, of course, the strength- 
ening of St. George's hold on the popular mind as the 
Patron of England. Of all legends, moreover, his was 
least affected by the Reformation, for the ideal he em- 
bodied was deeply imbedded in national life; whence 
it came about that he survived as the hero of many 
folk-plays sufficiently removed in spirit and content 
from the mediaeval legend. 

With regard to other saints, the information obtain- 
able does not show any marked preponderance in popu- 
larity of one over another. The striking thing that 
emerges from a scrutiny of the list is the fact that we know 
of only three cases in which native saints became the sub- 
jects of mediaeval plays. It is of record that St. Bride 



SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 299 

(Bridget) was so honored in 1442 and again in 1505-6, 
at Aberdeen; that in 1523 a play of St. Swithin was 
"acted in the Church" at Braintree, Essex; and that in- 
terludes of St. Thomas Becket were played at King's 
Lynn and Norwich, in Norfolk — in the former place as 
early as 1385. At Canterbury, rather curiously, the only 
mention of St. Thomas in connection with the drama 
concerns the pageant, probably a dumb-show, which 
was held on his day from 1504-5 until "far on in the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth." We ought not to suppose, I 
feel sure, that the martyrdom of St. Thomas was not 
elsewhere presented, nor that the legends of many other 
native saints were not taken for dramatic themes. It 
does appear fairly certain, however, that the great 
martyrs and confessors of the Church at large were more 
commonly the subjects of plays than the heroes of the 
Church in England. The same tendency that has been 
noted in connection with the writing of mediaeval leg- 
endaries and individual legends would thus have been 
operative in the making of popular dramas. 

The lost saints' plays, which we are considering, must 
in the nature of things have been very various in quality 
and in tendency. Most of them were produced in towns 
of some size by one or another of the guilds, to which 
the development of the drama owed so much; but for 
others churches, monastic establishments, or colleges were 
responsible. Very different from the ruder town plays 
must have been the mumming at Windsor in 1429-30, 
into which Lydgate introduced St. Clotilda, or the "play 



300 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

of Placidas, alias St. Eustace" at Braintree, Essex, in 
1534, which may have been written by Nicholas Udall, 
the author of the first "regular" comedy in English. 
Learned also, and learned in the older manner, must 
have been the Protestant John Bale's lost comedy, De 
Imposturis Thomw Becketi, mentioned by him among 
his English plays, most of which were based on biblical 
narratives. Whether or not this particular drama was 
ever performed, as some of his pieces were, we are not in- 
formed. Both Udall's and Bale's works belong, of course, 
rather to the preparatory period of Tudor drama than 
to the mediaeval stage; but when Udall was vicar of 
Braintree, the Reformation was only just beginning, and 
plays were still sometimes given in the churches. Long 
before his day, however, the drama had become pre- 
vailingly the concern of the secular authorities, and the 
grosser elements of comedy had been introduced into 
sacred themes. There is no reason to believe that the 
generality of saints' plays differed markedly in character 
from the biblical plays from which we gain most of our 
first-hand knowledge of the developed mediaeval drama 
in England. 

As has been said, it was the cyclic drama that best 
withstood the ravages of the Reformation. Largely by 
chance, no doubt, but by reason also of their wider dis- 
semination and more enduring popularity these plays 
have become our chief mediaeval texts; nor could the 
reformers have felt the same passion to destroy plays 
based on the Bible that they must have felt with reference 



SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 301 

to the legendary drama. Four cycles of them have sur- 
vived, indeed, with reasonable completeness: the four 
famous cycles concerning which every text-book of Eng- 
lish literature informs its readers. Fragments of four 
other cycles have come down to us, by which to check 
the general conclusions drawn from the York, Chester, 
Towneley or Wakefield, and Hegge plays (the last equally 
well known as the Ludus Coventriae) . The scope of several 
other cycles we also know from the records of their per- 
formance. Into the vexing questions of the origin and 
dates of the individual cycles it is not necessary for us 
to enter, since these matters in no way affect the prob- 
lems at hand. It is sufficient to say that the earliest of 
them must have been compiled towards the middle of 
the fourteenth century and that, as we have them, they 
are undoubtedly of composite authorship. All of them, it 
must be remembered, are in verse — often in verse of 
intricate design. 

These so-called miracle plays were based, of course, on 
biblical narrative; as cycles they spanned sacred history, 
sometimes from the creation to the day of judgment. 
From their inclusiveness it was inevitable that they 
should embody material drawn from apocryphal writ- 
ings. In so far as they did so, they drew upon sources 
intimately connected with hagiographical literature and 
used certain stories with which we have dealt in earlier 
chapters. Yet, as a matter of fact, it was almost wholly in 
the New Testament series that they were dependent on 
apocryphal texts. Only in the Chester Plays have I noted 



302 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

anything that seems to indicate a knowledge of the leg- 
ends dealing with Old Testament personages; and the 
possible French influence on the Chester cycle should 
make one wary of basing general conclusions upon its 
phenomena. In passing, it may be well to say that the 
Cornish cycles contain the legend of Adam's death and 
the Cross-wood, which shows the possibility that some of 
the lost English series used similar material. With regard 
to the New Testament, however, the authors of all the 
extant plays drew on apocryphal stories with free hand. 
In the York Plays, for example, traces have been found of 
the Pseudo-Matthew, the Proto-Gospel of St. James, and 
two versions of the Gospel of Nicodemus, as well as mate- 
rial concerning the birth and death of the Virgin and an 
allusion to the Cross legend. The Hegge Plays were based 
on the apocryphal gospels to an even greater extent, while 
the borrowings of the Towneley and Chester cycles were 
considerable. All this was perfectly natural; to the con- 
sciousness of the English populace, at least, there was no 
distinction in credibility between the canonical books and 
the tissue of legend with which they had been enlarged. 
Indeed, it is altogether certain that from the middle of the 
fourteenth century the cyclic drama was a most powerful 
agency for the wider dissemination of such fabulous 
stories. 

With saints' lives in the narrower and stricter sense the 
cycles had little to do, though the Veronica scene in the 
Hegge Plays and the similar allusion in the York cycle 
show how easily such material could find a place. Of the 



SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 303 

same character is the incident of the healing of Longinus, 
which was incorporated in the crucifixion scenes of the 
four great cycles. To draw any hard and fast lines would 
have been impossible, and would have occurred to no one. 
Whether or no saints' plays, by themselves, were ever 
performed in series, like the biblical cycles, is uncertain. 
On this account it is unfortunate that we have not more 
information about the Corpus Christi celebration at 
Aberdeen, Scotland, from 1510 until 1556 or later. In 
1531 there was an order that the crafts furnish their pa- 
geants as usual, and a list was subjoined. The fleshers 
furnished St. "Bestian" (presumably Sebastian) and his 
tormentors, the barbers St. Lawrence and his tormentors, 
the cordwainers St. Martin, the tailors the Coronation of 
Our Lady, the litsters St. Nicholas, the websters and 
others the Resurrection, and the smiths "the Bearmen of 
the Cross." If this notice refers to anything more than a 
dumb-show, something very like a cycle of saints' plays 
must have been performed, though a cycle of which the 
various parts would not have been schematically con- 
nected. No texts are preserved, however, and the mean- 
ing of the notices is far from clear. Elsewhere, so far as I 
know, there is no suggestion that saints' plays may have 
been joined together as were the biblical dramas. Noth- 
ing, however, would have been more natural. In the case 
Of Aberdeen, the fact that the procession was continued 
until so late as the second half of the sixteenth century 
makes one a little skeptical as to whether it was actually 
accompanied by plays, yet the citizens might possibly 



304 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

have clung to their established drama past the Reforma- 
tion. 

One curious survival from the second half of the fif- 
teenth century is the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, which 
is unique in being the only drama known to us, either by 
text or by contemporary notice, that was based on an 
exemplum. It thus merits the name of miracle play more 
exactly than do the biblical cycles, to which ancient usage 
has assigned the term. The piece comes from the East 
Midlands, though at which of the five Croxtons in that 
region it was performed there is no sure means of knowing. 
Such plays were by no means uncommon on the Conti- 
nent. Indeed, the theme of the Croxton play itself — the 
outrage done upon the consecrated host by a Jew — was 
used by dramatists of Italy, France, and the Netherlands. 
The English play is chiefly peculiar in its denoument: the 
Jew and his accomplices are converted by the miracle, 
absolved, and baptized. Undoubtedly the story upon 
which the play was based was disseminated from France, 
where the legend was known as early as the end of the 
thirteenth century, but the scene of the English ver- 
sion was laid in Spain. This means, I take it, that the 
author formed his drama on a stock exemplum, a theory 
confirmed by the Latin lines with which it is interlarded. 
Such anecdotes, it may be remarked, were not infre- 
quently given a Spanish setting at that period. The play 
is a crude production that could have been pleasing only 
to a very unsophisticated audience. It has an abundance 
of grotesque humor, but lacks the simple dignity that 



SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 305 

makes so much early drama appealing to our modern 
taste. Its importance to our present investigation is 
merely that it illustrates what many saints' plays must 
have been like. 

More learned and worshipful are The Conversion of St. 
Paul and Mary Magdalene, which are found in the early 
sixteenth century Digby MS. 133, but which were un- 
doubtedly written in the Midlands during the latter part 
of the previous century. Both of them have some merit, 
though they were perhaps less well adapted than plays of 
the Croxton type to please the coarser groundlings of the 
day. In quality of verse they smack strongly of the pious 
school of legend-writers, of which Lydgate was the mas- 
ter. Their authors must have been men of the stamp of 
Osbern Bokenam, the Austin friar of Suffolk. 

The Conversion of St. Paul, save for a scene in which 
the devils Belial and Mercury lament the loss of their 
"darling" Saul, is wholly based on the biblical narrative. 
Though its materials are thus not apocryphal, it has all 
the ear-marks of legend in its treatment. It was played in 
three stations, but would have required no great elabora- 
tion and may well have been designed, according to the 
conjecture of Mr. Chambers in The Mediaeval Stage, for 
performance in a small village. Throughout, the Poeta 
himself served as master of ceremonies, usefully but 
apologetically. One would like to think that this simple 
and dignified play was typical of saints' plays in general; 
but it is to be feared that more boisterous drama would 
have been better loved. 



306 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Far more ambitious than The Conversion of St. Paul is 
Mary Magdalene. It is more than two thousand lines in 
length, and is divisible into fifty-two scenes. Evidently 
it was devised for a somewhat elaborate setting, and it 
could hardly have been played except by a company with 
considerable resources. More than sixty characters, not 
to mention attendants and "the pepul," were necessary to 
its performance, while such stage-directions as "Here xall 
entyre a shyp with a mery song" indicate the extent to 
which the author called for ingenious and expensive me- 
chanical devices. The action covers the entire legendary 
history of Mary Magdalene, as it was developed in the 
West, from the death of her father to her apostolate in 
France and her own death there. Since the story is treated 
throughout with considerable amplitude, it is not ex- 
traordinary that the play is long. Yet the introduction of 
several allegorical figures like the Seven Deadly Sins and 
the Kings of the Flesh and of the World, which serves 
to connect the drama with the moralities of the time, 
does not clog its movement. As a matter of fact, 
there is little padding, and almost no interruption of 
the action save by the devils and angels who play the 
part of chorus. The scenes have robust vigor and con- 
siderable richness of dramatic action, yet they do not de- 
scend into broad farce for the sake of contrast. Mary's 
downfall, for example, is managed with a delicacy that 
shows not a little imaginative insight on the part of the 
unknown dramatist. There is much rant in the play, to 
be sure, but there are few lapses into dull debate or un- 



SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 307 

motivated action. The simplicity of the technique does 
not spoil the effect desired; but the appeal made by the 
drama is not wholly through its simplicity. According to 
its kind, it has genuine dramatic worth. Despite its 
length, it is not tedious. 

Less praise can be given the only saint's play that has 
survived from the period between the Reformation and 
the very end of the sixteenth century. This is likewise a 
dramatization of the Magdalene's story. The Life and 
Repentaunce of Mary Magdalene, by Lewis Wager, was 
first printed in 1566, though probably written during the 
reign of Edward VI. As Professor Carpenter has pointed 
out in the introduction to his edition, "the play is essen- 
tially a morality-play." Like most of the morals, it was 
composed from the Protestant point of view; and its chief 
aim was to drive home the lesson of repentance and of 
salvation by faith. Somewhat curiously, Wager chose to 
weave his allegory about a figure who had been a favorite 
of Catholic legend. Accordingly, he produced a work that 
stands, in the matter of content, between the older mir- 
acle plays and other moralities. He was very far, how- 
ever, from following the legend of Mary that the later 
Middle Ages had developed. Except in one or two minor 
particulars he based his scenes on the story : 

Written in the .vii. of Luke with wordes playne. 
In manner and technique his play is wholly a morality, 
and neither better nor worse than most works of its class. 
The stilted language and the awkward versification de- 
tract from its effectiveness almost as much as does the 



308 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

overwrought allegory. What Wager attempted could 
have been accomplished successfully only by a writer of 
genuine talent; and Wager, it is to be feared, was merely a 
versifying parson. 

The loss of plays by Nicholas Udall and John Bale has 
already been noted. Did they survive, and did we still 
have The Commody of the moste vertuous and godlye Su- 
sanna by Thomas Garter (licensed in 1568-9), we should 
be in a better position than we are at present to judge the 
use made of legendary themes by the earlier Protestants. 
With the mediaeval drama, however, had perished at once 
the inspiration and the excuse for saints' plays. The rec- 
ord of them even in pre-Reformation days has been im- 
perfectly preserved, as the slightness of the foregoing 
sketch will indicate, while in the development of the 
Elizabethan drama, legends of the saints could have, of 
course, no considerable part. Ever since the time of 
Henry VIII, the appearance of such themes on the Eng- 
lish stage has been purely sporadic and fortuitous. Brief 
mention of them will suffice. 

During the later years of Elizabeth's reign only one 
saint's play is known to have been presented. In 1599 
Sir Placidas, presumably a dramatic rendering of the ever 
popular Eustace legend, by Henry Chettle, was produced 
in London. Henslowe records the fact, but the play has 
perished. W T e can only hazard the surmise that, like 
Partridge's poetical narrative of 1566, which dealt inno- 
cently with the same theme, Chettle's drama was so ar- 
ranged as to give no shock to a Protestant audience. 



SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 309 

In the time of James I, again, a solitary play, The Vir- 
gin Martyr by Massinger, is the only representative of 
saints' legends in the drama. This curious tragedy, which 
was perhaps a revision of an earlier play by Dekker, was 
licensed in 1620 and printed in 1622. It is a dramatization 
of the Dorothea legend, but with an admixture of elements 
from the vulgate lives of St. Agnes and St. Juliana. Un- 
even in texture, it has scenes of considerable power, yet as 
a whole is theatrical and tasteless. To have adapted suc- 
cessfully a saint's legend to the dramatic fashions of that 
day would have been a difficult feat; and the attempt was 
doomed to failure when undertaken by a writer of Mas- 
singer's narrow talent. The scenes of comedy, whether 
composed by himself or by Dekker, destroy the poor 
affectation of dignity that is supported almost wholly by 
rhetoric, while the catastrophe is melodramatic rather 
than tragic. The device of introducing a guardian angel in 
the disguise of Dorothea's servant illustrates the futile 
extravagance of the piece. Charles Lamb praised the 
scenes between this Angelo and the saint, but not very 
wisely, I think. From the point of view of legend, at least, 
they deserve little commendation. Perhaps, however, 
only a mawkish transformation like Massinger's could 
have found a place on the seventeenth century stage. It 
is to be noted that The Virgin Martyr was held in so much 
esteem that it was revived after the Restoration. 

At just what date a drama entitled St. George for Eng- 
land, by Wentworth Smith, was written, we do not know, 
but the author's other works fall between 1601 and 1623. 



310 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

A copy of St. George for England was among the plays de- 
stroyed by Warburton's infamous cook. Very probably it 
suggested the title for James Shirley's St. Patrick for Ire- 
land^ which was produced in 1639-40. Shirley was at that 
time in Ireland, writing for the Dublin stage. His play, 
though it does not lack the romantic vigor characteristic 
of the author, is even more absurd than The Virgin Mar- 
tyr from the point of view of hagiography. Quite apart 
from that, moreover, dramatic propriety is grossly vio- 
lated by many of the songs that are introduced, as well as 
by such scenes as the last, in which St. Patrick banishes 
the serpents from the island. Shirley's Catholicism did not 
prevent him from treating his theme in the stereotyped 
manner of tragi-comedy then in vogue. We cannot regret 
that he found no encouragement, as was apparently the 
case, to write the second part announced in the prologue. 
Another play by Shirley with a saint as its hero, The 
Tragedy of St. Albans, was entered on the Stationers* 
Register in 1639, but it has disappeared. 

Meanwhile, in 1638, had been printed The Seven Cham- 
pions of Christendome by John Kirke, which had been 
previously "acted at the Cocke-pit, and at the Red-Bull 
in St. John's Streete, with a generall liking." It is a drama- 
tization of Richard Johnson's romance, The Seven Cham- 
pions of Christendom, which appeared in 1596. Like its 
source, it seems to have enjoyed a considerable popularity, 
but presumably only because St. George was its hero. 
The material was not well suited to dramatic presenta- 
tion, nor was John Kirke a playwright of ability. 



SAINTS' LIVES IN DRAMA 311 

No other plays from the period prior to the closing of 
the theatres have come to my notice. The meagreness 
of the record would be more regrettable if the dramatists 
of the age could by any possibility have used saints' lives 
with good effect. They were, in fact, less well fitted to treat 
such themes than was Corneille, whose Polyeucte (1643) 
was translated, during the ascendancy of Cromwell, by 
Sir William Lower as Polyeuctes, or The Martyr (1655). 

After the Restoration, the condition neither of the stage 
nor of public taste was such as to foster the proper drama- 
tization of legends. Dry den's Tyrannic Love, or The Royal 
Martyr stands, as a matter of fact, quite alone. Catharine 
of Alexandria is the heroine. The play is one of Dryden's 
series of "heroic dramas" and was produced in 1668 or 
1669. In method it does not differ greatly from the more 
famous Conquest of Granada : the action is theatrically 
bold, and the characters are drawn, as the author flattered 
himself, "on a grand scale." It is to be feared, however, 
that the legend adapted itself almost too easily to the 
absurd exaggerations and the conventional mannerisms of 
Restoration tragedy. All the worst features of the story 
appear strikingly in the play, while the beauty underlying 
the verbiage of most accounts of the saint is completely 
lost to sight. Even in his later Catholic years, Dryden 
would have been ill fitted to treat the life of a saint with 
sympathetic insight; in the fourth decade of his life he 
was capable of nothing but melodramatic presentation 
of externals. 

Here the matter rests. Since Dryden's day no impor- 



312 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

tant attempt has been made to picture saints' lives on the 
English stage. Tennyson's Becket (1885), though a nota- 
ble tragedy, is scarcely of a sort to renew the succession: 
it is an historical drama the hero of which happens to be 
canonized, but it is not a saint's play. 




CHAPTER IX 
THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 

j] Y the end of the fifteenth century, as we have 
seen, the writing of saints' legends in England 
had virtually ceased. The influences that 
were to bring about the Reformation, with 
its consequent hatred and fear of Catholic tradition, as 
well as of Catholic dogma, had already become actively 
operative, though they were unrecognized. Without those 
deeper causes, the mingled rapacity and patriotism of 
Henry VIII could scarcely have succeeded in changing 
the bases of religion and of the English social system as 
they did. He would not have found ministers like Wolsey 
and Cromwell to do his bidding and to share his spoils, nor 
would he have been able to sway the mind of his people 
as he wished. To enter into a discussion of the compli- 
cated influences that brought about the Reformation 
would not here be in place. It is necessary merely to point 
out, as a symptom of the times, that legend-writing fell 
into abeyance several decades before the break with 
Rome, and long before the cult of saints became a thing 
abhorrent to the majority of the English nation. 

At the same time, it is well to remember that Henry 
and his agents took quite definite measures to influence 
the opinions of the public along the lines that best suited 
them. Never was there a government more ruthless in 



314 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

crushing opposition; but never until that time, at least, 
one so careful to mould the feeling of the populace into 
retrospective acquiescence in its most tyrannical meas- 
ures. The monasteries were suppressed in spite of com- 
plaints and uprisings; and men were reconciled to the 
monstrous outrage not merely by the pickings that they 
got, but by the gradually disseminated belief that they 
had been rescued from the clutch of a mighty octopus. 
The shrines at which they worshipped were profaned and 
destroyed; yet in process of time they came to look back 
at their ways before the schism with something like hor- 
ror. The less said of the motives of Henry and his minis- 
ters, the greater the charity; but in its effects the Refor- 
mation made England whole-heartedly Frotestant. 

Along with shrines and images, books of saints' lives 
fell under the ban of the Church. They could not, like 
ecclesiastical plate and the lead of church roofs, be sold to 
advantage. They could not even, like the stone of ruined 
architectural fabrics, be put to the base uses of the neigh- 
borhood. They could only be destroyed — as rubbish. 
In the wanton destruction, of course, other than legend 
manuscripts perished. We do not know what the book con- 
tained, of which a record exists, that was used to patch a 
roof; and the "whole ships full" that "grocers and soap- 
sellers," according to John Bale's famous statement, sent 
"over the sea to the bookbinders" must have been mixed 
cargoes of manuscripts. But one has only to see the de- 
facement of surviving books to understand the fanatical 
fury of the crew that was only less zealous to destroy than 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 315 

to acquire. Two reports to Cromwell, cited by Cardinal 
Gasquet, will serve to illustrate the animus of King 
Henry's inquisitors. Dr. Layton wrote from Bath Abbey : 
"Ye shall herewith receive a book of Our Lady's miracles 
well able to match the Canterbury tales. Such a book of 
dreams as ye never saw, which I found in the library." 
This from the man whose letters, as Cardinal Gasquet has 
well said, "on the face of them, are the outpourings of a 
thoroughly brutal and depraved nature; even still, they 
actually soil the hand that touches them." Another of 
Cromwell's agents selected five volumes from the books 
of a country parson, as evidence against him, "whereof 
three are entitled Homeliari Johis Echii, being all three 
dated a.d. 1438; one book of the life of St. Thomas Beclcet, 
and a missal wherein is the word papa throughoutly 
uncorrected." 

Although there is abundant evidence that the English 
people in general looked with disfavor on the changes that 
were wrought by the agency of such men as Cromwell 
employed, it was inevitable that they should at length 
adjust their opinions to the accomplished fact. Legends, 
like saints and shrines and monks, became anathema to 
them. Only the Catholic remnant remained to cherish 
such records of the past; and until the close of the eight- 
eenth century Catholics lived in England, at most times, 
only on sufferance. In such circumstances, it is not extraor- 
dinary that saints' lives have had little influence in Eng- 
lish literature from the time of Henry's break with Rome 
in 1534. The course they have followed has been for the 



316 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

most part underground; and it is important only as illus- 
trating a submerged current of national life. On this ac- 
count a cursory treatment of legend-writing during the 
past four centuries is all that need be given. 

In the first place, it should be noted that saints' lives 
did not share in the movement that brought English liter- 
ature under the later Tudor sovereigns to a pitch of great- 
ness never before attained. Their use as materials for the 
drama has already been discussed. Except for this unim- 
portant contact, they were so completely neglected that 
the most barren century in English hagiography since 
missionaries first came to Britain is the sixteenth, at least 
if the works in Latin and French of earlier times be taken 
into account. A production like John Foxe's Actes and 
Monuments (1563), usually known as Booh of Martyrs, 
cannot be said to come within our survey. Although 
Foxe sometimes mentioned canonized persons, he was 
too Protestant a martyrologist to regard them as saints. 
His sketch of the heroes of the early Church is meagre 
and inadequate, while his account of later figures is 
marked by inaccuracy and prejudice. The few legends 
that were actually written in this period have interest 
chiefly because of their rarity, and because they were 
written in an age when other literary types were develop- 
ing with remarkable vigor. 

The saints' lives that appeared in those very Protestant 
times were sometimes, indeed, strangely disguised. In 
1566, for example, was printed The worthie Hystorie of the 
most Noble and valiaunt Knight Placidas, otherwise called 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 317 

Eustas, who was martyred for the Profession of Jesus Christ. 
There is nothing in this doggerel version of the Eustace 
legend, between twelve and thirteen hundred lines long, 
that could have troubled the conscience of the staunchest 
Protestant. The fact that Eustace had been accounted a 
saint is alluded to in the preface but is elsewhere dis- 
creetly obscured, while his story is told merely as an ex- 
ample of great patience. God no longer addresses Placidas 
through the mouth of the stag, as in all the older versions 
of the story, but "out from cloudes he called to him." 
Only for his skill in adapting a forbidden theme does the 
otherwise unknown author, John Partridge, deserve 
praise. It is characteristic of the time, and indicative of 
the audience to which the work was addressed, that Par- 
tridge dedicated his verses to a "marchaunt venturer" of 
London, to whom Partridge was apparently chaplain. 

Of scarcely greater interest is a version of the Theoph- 
ilus legend by an equally obscure author, William For- 
rest, which was written in 1572. Forrest was educated at 
Oxford during the reign of Henry VIII, went into the 
Church, and took up the cudgels for Queen Katharine, in 
whose defense he wrote A History of Griseldis. Although 
he seems to have wavered somewhat in his adherence to 
Catholicism, he was made a chaplain to Queen Mary. 
Thereafter he must have been steadfast, since his Theoph- 
ilus, written when he was a comparatively old man, was 
altogether on the Catholic side. It was, indeed, almost as 
much a controversial tract as a poetical narrative. For- 
rest took pains to justify himself for writing a miracle of 



318 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

the Virgin, and in so doing he made a rather dull poem 
even duller. For, even without the apologetics and ex- 
hortation, this Theophilus would merit small praise. The 
crabbed verse, pedantic diction, and stilted rhetoric have 
no power to edify or please. Nowhere in the one hundred 
and seventy-nine seven-line stanzas is there anything of 
real worth. The legend is altogether very tedious, and 
worthy of mention only because such works were ex- 
tremely rare at the time. It was never printed until dis- 
covered by a modern scholar, but perhaps only because in 
1572 no printer could be found to handle so reactionary a 
work. 

As far as I am aware, no saint's legend was written in 
England, after William Forrest's attempt, until 1595. In 
that year was composed a prose life of St. Eiheldreda 
(Audrey), which is to be found — as yet unprinted — in a 
manuscript (no. 120) belonging to Corpus Christi College, 
Oxford. I ought, however, to warn my readers that in 
other manuscripts or old prints there may be legends from 
the sixteenth century that have escaped my notice. Yet 
it is safe to say that extraordinarily few were written. 

The causes for this silence may be further illustrated 
by reference to a very popular book, of which the first edi- 
tion was published in 1596. 1 Any one who has ever ex- 
amined Richard Johnson's The famous History of the seven 
Champions of Christendom will see that it cannot properly 
be classed as a collection of saints' lives. It is rather an 

1 Entered on the Stationers' Register in 1596. Copies dated 1597, 
probably of the second edition, are the earliest surviving. 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 319 

ultra-Protestant travesty on the legends of certain saints 
whose names had become so deeply impressed on folk- 
tradition that they could be treated as figures of romance. 
The wild and fabulous tale of which they are made the 
heroes furnishes an amusing comment on the anti-papis- 
tical fury of Elizabethan England. Seldom has fancy 
played about any heroes with so little restraint as in 
Johnson's pages. The story of St. George, for example, 
which forms the groundwork of the romance, is a singular 
fusion of the original legend with the theme of the popular 
mediaeval romance, Sir Beves of Hampton. It is alto- 
gether unlikely that Johnson himself was responsible for 
this fusion. The account of St. George's birth that Spen- 
ser gave in the Faerie Queene makes clear his knowledge of 
some such story of the saint. It is certain, however, that 
Johnson bedecked the tradition with the fine feathers of 
Elizabethan romance and made of it what it is : something 
extraordinarily different from a saint's legend proper. 
Yet as a chap-book The Seven Champions had such a suc- 
cess that its contents have become a part of the common 
heritage of the English-speaking world. An age that had 
been bullied into hatred of the saints thus bequeathed to 
the generations following a sorry burlesque of saintly lives 
with which to amuse their children. The influence of the 
book on the drama has been mentioned in the chapter 
preceding this. To countless Protestant boys the seven 
champions have been heroes whom they gratefully remem- 
bered in later years — heroes of fantastic romance. So 
there has been formed a curious eddy of Catholic tradition 



320 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

in the midst of Protestantism; an eddy, alas! that quite 
shockingly belies its source. 

With the coming in of the seventeenth century there 
began a new series of saints' lives, Catholic of authorship 
and tendency, and furtive of publication when printed at 
all, yet responding to the literary fashions of the time. 
These works, which constitute of themselves a literature 
far more extensive than one would deem possible in the 
conditions, show that by the time of Elizabeth's death the 
Catholic remnant had assembled its forces and become 
conscious of its integrity. The foundation of the English 
College at Douay by Cardinal Allen, and the re-establish- 
ment there of the Benedictines, gave the Church a rally- 
ing-point within convenient distance from the shores of 
England and did much to preserve Catholic learning. 
Thence were sent out not only the missionary priests but 
many books of religious instruction — ■ among them saints' 
legends. This literature did not become, for a very long 
time, an instrument of propaganda; it was designed for 
the spiritual sustenance of the faithful. Accordingly it 
had a very limited circulation and is now difficult to trace, 
while a good deal of it is mere translation and has no im- 
portance save as a record of religious endeavor. 

The first of these works that need be mentioned is 
Saint Marie Magdalens Conversion, a poem of one hundred 
and ten six-line stanzas, which was put forth without indi- 
cation of place or printer in 1603, the year of James I's suc- 
cession. The prose address to the readers is signed J. C, 
initials that have not been identified. Evidently the poem 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 321 

was printed for private circulation, and probably abroad. 
The verse is graceful, but it followed an unfortunate tradi- 
tion in its conceits and over-elaborate descriptions. It is 
weak and tasteless in the manner of the worst Elizabethan 
poetry. 

In 1608 appeared a more important work, the first of 
the long series of modern compilations designed to give 
general instruction in the legends of the Church. The 
author's name was John Watson, but like so many Catho- 
lics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries he was 
better known by an alias. Thus the book is often attri- 
buted to John Wilson. Only the initials, J. W., appear on 
the title-page. The character of the work is best indicated 
by its title: English Martyrologie; containing a Summary 
of the Lives of the Saintes of England, Scotland and Ireland; 
collected and distributed into Moneths, after the Form of a 
Calender, according to every Saintes Festivity. It was 
valueless as a work of erudition. Indeed, it warranted the 
disapprobation of Bishop Challoner in the eighteenth 
century, who wrote: "This writer, besides omitting the 
greater part of the Saints of the Scots Calendar (which he 
never saw), and almost all the Saints of Ireland, has been 
guilty of many gross mistakes in History with regard to 
those he has commemorated, and generally been very 
unhappy in the choice of the materials he has made use of, 
omitting what would have been most edifying in the Sum- 
mary he gives of the lives of those servants of God and 
insisting chiefly on certain marvellous events, for the 
most part destitute of any sufficient authority to support 



322 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

them." Nevertheless, the fact of its appearance at all, 
and of its subsequent re-issue in 1640 and 1672, shows the 
important place that the book filled in the history of 
Catholic literature. However inadequate it may have 
been, it served a useful purpose. 

At about the same time, apparently, Robert (or Ralph) 
Buckland compiled The Lives of Women Saints of our 
Contrie of England. Also some other Lines of holy Women 
written by some of the auncient Fathers, a work that was 
never printed until brought to light in our time by the 
indefatigable Dr. Horstmann. The only manuscript 
known seems to be a scribe's fair copy from the author's 
original, intended perhaps for the printer when an oppor- 
tunity of printing came. Why the book was thus stifled at 
birth we can hardly hope to discover. Indeed, its date 
can only be inferred from the water-mark of the paper of 
the manuscript and from the character of the scribe's 
hand, which indicate that the copy was made between 
1610 and 1615. The author, whose English was as Cice- 
ronian as he could make it, evidently intended his com- 
pilation for a work of devotion in praise of virginity; but 
it remains as a monument of unrewarded toil, despite the 
carefulness of his method and the dignity of his style. It 
is in two parts, the first containing thirty-four lives of 
saintly women connected with the history of Great Brit- 
ain, abridged from various Latin sources, the second 
consisting of seven longer lives translated from the 
Fathers. The first part, for which the compiler drew most 
largely on John of Tynemouth's Nova Legenda Anglias, 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 323 

though he used also recent works like Baronius* Annates 
Ecclesiastici and Lippeloo's Vita? Sanctorum, is chrono- 
logically arranged. Altogether, it seems regrettable that 
a work of such learning, conscientiously expended, should 
have failed of its intended purpose. 

Of the same period (about 1608-17) is Nicholas Roscar- 
rock's Lives of the English Saints, a still more important 
collection of prose legends, which still awaits an editor. 
Indeed, the unique manuscript of the work has come to 
light more recently than is the case with any other legend- 
ary. The compiler was a man of very considerable erudi- 
tion, and gathered a mass of information with regard to 
the saints of Great Britain that should be made accessible 
to scholars. Obviously the collection had no chance of 
finding readers, since for something like two hundred 
and seventy-five years it was hidden away in the library 
of a country-house, and later in a Cambridgeshire rectory. 
It is not a work that would have attracted a wide audi- 
ence, in any case, since it was made by an obscure scholar 
for the use of other scholars. Roscarrock's antiquarian 
lore is, nevertheless, of marked value. 

The need that was felt among English Catholics for 
collections of saints' lives for private reading is shown by 
various translations which began to appear early in the 
century. The collection of Alfonso Villegas first appeared 
in a rendering by W. and E. Kinsman in 1610-14; it was 
issued again in 1636, with additions from Ribadeneira; it 
was once more translated by John Heigham in 1650; and 
still another version, without date or translator's name, is 



324 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

extant under the title of Flos Sanctorum. Pedro Riba- 
deneira's complete collection, moreover, was translated 
by Edward Dawson, and published at Douay in 1615. It 
is interesting to note that these two Spanish hagiographi- 
cal works became known in England at a time when the 
Spanish influence was beginning to be felt by other de- 
partments of literature. Still another translation from 
the earlier decades of the century was a rendering of the 
Roman Martyrology, issued by George Keynes in 1627. 
The success of this can be judged by the fact that a new 
edition of it was published forty years later. Father 
Keynes did his work with remarkable skill; and his in- 
troduction is a model of devotional writing. 

In the first half of the century another new phenome- 
non is to be observed: certain Catholic ladies began to 
write, and among other things to write lives of saints. 
Lady Elizabeth Falkland, for example, composed lives in 
verse of Mary Magdalene, of St. Agnes, and of St. Eliza- 
beth of Portugal. Though the dates of these poems are 
not known to me, their period can be estimated from the 
stretch of Lady Elizabeth's career, 1585 to 1639. St. 
Elizabeth of Portugal was the subject of another of these 
early feminine excursions in authorship. At Brussels in 
1628 was published A short Relation of the Life, Virtues 
and Miracles of s. Elizabeth, called the Peacemaker, Queen 
of Portugall, "translated out of Dutch" by Catherine 
Francis Greenung, of the order of St. Francis. 

In 1631 Peter Heylyn, chaplain of Archbishop Laud, 
brought out The Historie of That most famous Saint and 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 325 

Souldier of Christ Jesus St. George of Cappadocia, a work 
significant in several ways. It well represents the ecclesi- 
astical tendencies of Laud and his followers. Though 
Heylyn was, of course, not a Catholic, he was sufficiently 
sympathetic with tradition to treat the legend of St. 
George without Protestant fury. His book, if not wise, 
was learned: a serious examination of a figure too inti- 
mately connected with England's history to be forgotten 
after the Reformation. Despite its faults, the study is 
important as the first sober effort of Anglican scholarship 
in hagiography. In another way, also, it marks the be- 
ginning of new conditions: not only was it issued, but it 
sold. In 1633 a new edition came from the press. 

Equally significant, and much more important of itself, 
is an allegorical poem on The Life and Death of Mary 
Magdalene by an unknown Thomas Robinson. If my con- 
clusions are correct, it was written between 1636 and 1639. 
Dr. Sommer, who has twice edited the work, assigned it 
to a much earlier date, and to a Dr. Thomas Robinson 
who was at one time Dean of Durham. It was, however, 
a product of the reign of Charles I. It is dedicated, in one 
of the two existing manuscripts, "To the right honourable 
and truly Noble gentleman, Lord Hen: Clifford, Lord 
Lieutenant Of the midle shires Of Westmoreland, Cum- 
berland, and Northumberland." Now Henry Clifford, 
5th Earl of Cumberland, held the somewhat unusual posi- 
tion of joint lord-lieutenant of those counties between 
March 14, 1636 and August 31, 1639. He was, moreover, 
the author of certain Poetical Translations of some Psalms 



326 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

and the Song of Solomon, which would have warranted 
Robinson in giving him the title of poet, as he did in the 
dedication. There is also a reference in the poem itself, 
unnoticed by Dr. Sommer, that makes its ascription to 
the reign of Elizabeth impossible. 

There stood ye Monarche of this tripple Isle: 
The Destinies for euer on him smile. 

This pious wish was sadly frustrated, for Charles I was 
the monarch. 

The Life and Death of Mary Magdalene belongs with the 
poetry that owed its formal inspiration and something of 
its inner spirit to Spenser. The metre is the eight-line 
stanza used by Giles Fletcher in Christ's Victorie and Tri- 
umph and by Phineas Fletcher in The Purple Island. In- 
deed, it is to the brothers Fletcher that our poet is most 
closely comparable. Like them he lacked Spenser's 
breadth of invention and his sustained poetical power; 
like them he had learned from Spenser not only manner- 
isms but a technique of extraordinary excellence in its 
kind. There are passages of marvellous beauty in The 
Purple Island, and most of them owe their loveliness to 
Phineas Fletcher's acquirement of Spenser's eye, his feel- 
ing, and his method of expression. In Giles Fletcher some- 
what higher qualities of adaptation are discoverable, es- 
pecially in the final section of his poem; of his strain of 
ecstatic lyricism Spenser would not have been capable. 
Robinson must, it is clear, have been strongly influenced 
by Christ's Victorie, even in the management of his theme. 
The kinship with Giles is more striking than with Phineas, 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 327 

amounting at times to imitation, though never to imita- 
tion that is servile. Robinson's talent, however limited in 
scope, was genuine: his utterances were his own. From the 
grosser faults against good taste, which are the great 
weaknesses of the Fletchers, he was, moreover, compara- 
tively free. The tone of Mary Magdalene is thoroughly 
reverential and harmonious with its subject. 

It is not, strictly speaking, a narrative of Mary's life. 
It is an allegory through which the events of her life are at 
once revealed and illustrated. The treatment is bold, but 
it is impressive and memorable. Moreover, there are 
many stanzas of rich and quiet loveliness among the one 
hundred and ninety-nine of which the poem is composed. 
The following will show some of the qualities that make 
the work remarkable, though quotation cannot represent 
its larger excellencies. 

The ship, that erst was toss'd with winde and tyde, 
Hath no we y e port of quietnesse attaind; 
The pilgrime wandringe through y e deserts wide, 
Hath no we at length a ioyefull harbour gaind; 
And shee, that erst was pitied and plaind, 

Nowe weepes for ioy, and ioyes in sorrow true; 

And faire Syneide is return'd to viewe 
Her chambers, and to build y e palaces a newe. 

More closely connected with the general current of 
English literature than most saints' lives of the seven- 
teenth century are likewise certain poems by Richard Cra- 
shaw. Sainte Mary Magdalene, or the Weeper (1646), like 
the poem by Thomas Robinson, which was written only a 
few years earlier, does not so much narrate the life of the 



328 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

Magdalene as use her figure as a theme for allegorical in- 
terpretation. Unlike Robinson, however, Crashaw merely 
descanted upon her tears and did not weave into his stan- 
zas any account of her life. A Hymn to the Name and 
Honor of the Admirable Sainte Teresa, published in the 
same volume, and Alexias: The Complaint of the Forsaken 
Wife of Sainte Alexis, which Crashaw issued two years 
later, show that he was never so much interested in the 
succession of events as in the significance of them. In 
dealing with saints' lives, as always, he was a lyrical poet, 
His imagination, delicate and yet bold, found in such 
themes an inspiration proper to itself. Very subtle and 
very noble in their way, his tributes to the saints were less 
a contribution to hagiography than to the literature of 
religious ecstasy. They are mentioned here because they 
represent so adequately the reaction from Puritanism to 
Catholicism that preceded the Puritan triumph. The 
same tendency, of course, is illustrated in Crashaw's life: 
ejected from Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1644, he died at 
Loretto in 1650. 

Meanwhile, as the Puritan crisis came nearer, English 
Catholics became more and more active in publishing lives 
of saints, even though they had to send them out from 
the printing-houses of France and the Low Countries. 
To the Society of Jesus, actively engaged in the English 
nission, many of these books were due, but by no means 
all. For example, a Life and Death of the Glorious Convert 
s. Marie of JEgypt, unsigned and undated, without indica- 
tion of place or printer, represents the obscure way in 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 329 

which many works were issued. This particular book is 
supposed to have come from Douay about 1630, though 
that cannot be proved. It is in verse of no very high 
accomplishment, not unreadable, but stilted and over- 
wrought with conceits. 

Active among the Jesuit hagiographers of the time was 
Henry Hawkins, whose books were issued from Paris. In 
1632 he published The History of St. Elizabeth, Daughter 
of the King of Hungary. Collected from various authors, and 
a translation from the Italian of Maffaeus, entitled Fruga 
S&culi; or, the Holy Hatred of the World. Conteyning the 
Lives of 17 Holy Confessours. In the same year, the first 
volume of a work on the Lives of English Saints by a Bene- 
dictine, Jerome Porter, and prepared for the press by 
Francis Hull, appeared at Douay. The second volume 
was never published, however, and the book is said to be 
lost. In 1635 appeared two different translations of the 
Latin Life of St. Wenefred by Robert of Shrewsbury, the 
one by Michael Griffith, alias F. Alford, and the other by 
John Falkner, both of them Jesuits. The Life and Mir- 
acles of St. Benedict, by John Cuthbert Fursden, 1638, is a 
work of popularization of the same general character. 

The Puritan ascendancy seems to have checked the 
making of saints' lives; nor, moreover, do they appear to 
have been cultivated to any extent under the laxer sway 
of the restored Stuarts. The repressive measures against 
Catholics that followed the Revolution of 1688 are well 
known. It is not remarkable, therefore, that during the 
second half of the seventeenth century very few saintly 



330 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

legends were written in English. The discouragement 
caused by the fall of James II would, of itself, account for 
the lack of hagiographieal works from the latter part of 
the period. 

Intrinsically worthless, and curious only because it is 
the solitary experiment of the sort for many decades, as 
far as I know, is The Famous History of Saint George, Eng- 
lands brave Champion, a versification of the sections of 
The Seven Champions of Christendom devoted to the na- 
tional saint. Corser's conjecture, in his Collectanea Anglo- 
Poetica, that it was made about 1660 by Gaudy Bramp- 
ton, the lord of a Norfolk manor, seems to be sound. It 
was, that is, merely the pastime of a country gentleman, 
which has chanced to survive in his autograph manu- 
script. More in accord with the spirit of the time was an- 
other anonymous modification of The Seven Champions, 
which appeared in 1685. This was entitled The Delightful 
History of the Life and Death of That Renowned and Fa- 
mous St. Patrick, Champion of Ireland. It contained mat- 
ters, like an account of St. Patrick's Purgatory, not found 
in Johnson's book, but it was based on that romantic nar- 
rative. Of more importance was the three-volume Life of 
St. Teresa by Abraham Woodhead, published in 1669-71. 
This translation of the saint's autobiography was not soon 
forgotten, and was revived by Challoner almost a century 
later. Other legends from this period, like The Life and 
Gests of S. Thomas Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford (1674), 
by R. S(trange), and a translation of The Life of St. 
Ignatius by Dominick Bouhours, made by a "Person of 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 331 

Quality" in 1686, serve merely to illustrate the low ebb 
to which hagiography had fallen. 

Of purely antiquarian and scholarly impulse were the 
researches which led to the publication by William Cave, 
in 1674, of his Antiquitates Apostolicoe: or, the History of 
the Lives, Acts and Martyrdoms of the Holy Apostles; and, 
in 1677, of Apostolici: or, the History of the Lives, Acts, 
Deaths and Martyrdoms of those who were Contemporary 
with, or immediately succeeded the Apostles, to which the 
former work was appended as a second volume. Cave's 
labors were respectable rather than brilliant, and they 
have been forgotten. Not so with the researches of Henry 
Wharton — once Cave's assistant — who was moved by 
the same impulse to the publication, in 1691, of his 
Anglia Sacra. Although his two folio volumes had little to 
do with writings in English, and concerned themselves 
with saints' lives only when the saints were prelates, we 
owe to his devotion some texts that would otherwise be 
still inaccessible. The Anglia Sacra is a monument of 
brilliant talents spent in scholarship before youth was 
past: Wharton died only four years after the issue of his 
great work, at the age of thirty-one. 

Through the reigns of Anne and George I, much the 
same conditions prevailed among English Catholics as 
during the latter part of the seventeenth century. Indeed, 
to the previous difficulties of their existence seems to have 
been added a feeling of hopelessness that kept them inac- 
tive. A genius like Pope, though a Catholic, could flourish 
in those times, but only by adding to his genius extraor- 



332 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

dinary pertinacity, and only by keeping his religion and 
his literary career quite separate. Of Catholicism during 
the entire period the records are singularly incomplete. 
Dr. Edwin H. Burton says in his admirable study, The 
Life and Times of Bishop Challoner: "There has been no 
epoch in the history of the Church in this land about 
which so little has yet been written as the half -century 
which followed the Revolution. From 1690 to 1740 there 
is almost a blank in our annals." Thus it is not to be 
wondered at that hagiological studies did not flourish. 

Indeed, I have noted only one work of the sort from 
Catholic sources between 1700 and 1729. This was a new 
edition, in 1712, by F. Metcalf, a Jesuit, of Falkner's 
translation of Robert of Shrewsbury's vita of St. Wene- 
fred. Metcalf made some alterations in Falkner's text 
and added an account of certain late miracles. It was not 
a remarkable performance, but it became the subject of 
virulent Anglican attack. In the following year William 
Fleetwood, Bishop of Ely, reprinted the little book as 
The Life and Miracles of St. Wenefrede, together with her 
Litanies; with some Historical Observations made thereon. 
The "observations" were characterized by prejudice 
rather than great learning; and the obscure little contro- 
versy deserves record only as showing how generally neg- 
lected and how violently hated were the lives of saints. 
Although Thomas Dawson, an Anglican antiquary, pub- 
lished in 1714 a book entitled Memories of St. George the 
English Patron; and of the most noble order of the Garter, he 
used St. George merely as a stalking-horse to introduce 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 333 

the antiquities of Windsor. Moreover, his pedantic dis- 
play of learning with regard to the legend of the saint was 
borrowed from Peter Heylyn, and was far from represent- 
ing a serious study of the materials. 

With 1729, however, began a better era for hagiogra- 
phy. In that year Dr. Charles Umfreville, usually known 
as Charles Fell, published anonymously in London The 
Lives of Saints: collected from Authentick Records of Church 
History. With a full Account of the other Festivals through- 
out the year. To which is prefixed a Treatise on the Moveable 
Feasts and Fasts of the Church. This work in four quarto 
volumes was a scholarly attempt to give English readers 
the lives of the most important saints of the Church, ar- 
ranging them according to the calendar and citing author- 
ities. In arrangement and method it thus foreshadowed 
Alban Butler's wonderful collection. Indeed, in my judg- 
ment, the work has never been recognized at its true 
worth. One gathers that Fell must have been difficult as a 
priest and that he may have been disagreeable as a man. 
He seems to have involved himself, perhaps discreditably, 
by the publication of his four volumes; and in 1731 he was 
declared a bankrupt. In 1732 his irregular election to the 
London "chapter" occasioned an acrimonious ecclesiasti- 
cal quarrel. Everything points to some kind of personal 
animus in the reception given The Lives of Saints. Wit- 
ham, the President of Douay, where Fell had studied for 
two years, was instrumental in getting the book con- 
demned at Rome, complaining that it was largely trans- 
lated and that it recorded few miracles. Altogether, the 



334 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

collection met with no favor, even among Catholics, 
though Fell managed to get a second edition of it issued 
in 1750. 

Nevertheless, as I have intimated, The Lives of Saints 
has real value, both as a work of scholarship and as an 
example of sound eighteenth century prose. When one 
considers that it was compiled while Fell was working 
amid the hazards and difficulties of the English mission, 
one cannot fail to be astonished by the steady judgment 
and the patient investigation that it displays. The style 
has the serene dignity and the solid exactness of phrasing 
that the best writers of the time knew how to achieve; and 
in all details the collection is workmanlike. It was worthy 
of the best traditions of the Bollandists; and of itself it has 
by no means deserved the condemnation and neglect it 
has suffered. Witham's charges rest no more heavily upon 
it than similar charges might upon any work of reverent 
and clear-sighted Catholic scholarship. However unfor- 
tunate his career may have been, Fell's book should be 
honored by everyone interested in saints' lives. 

In marked contrast is a new translation of Ribadeneira 
by W. Petre, of which I know only the second edition, 
published in 1730: The Lives of Saints with Feasts of the 
Year, according to the Roman Calendar. This was an ex- 
ceedingly careless performance, valueless from any point 
of view, particularly as there were earlier translations of 
the work. Another translator of the time was William 
Crathorne, who assumed the name of Yaxley and later of 
Augustin Shepherd. He published a Life of St. Francis of 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 335 

Sales in 1737 and a Life of our Lord Jesus Christ two years 
later. Both were from the French, and were the work of 
his old age. His adequacy for the task of translation is at- 
tested by the fact that he was prefect of studies at Douay 
before he went on the English mission. 

The greatest name, save Alban Butler's, in English 
hagiography of the eighteenth century, as incomparably 
it is the greatest name in English Catholicism during that 
period, is that of Bishop Richard Challoner, Vicar Apos- 
tolic of the London District, whose long life (1691-1781) 
spanned decades of intermittent persecution and ex- 
tended into times of comparative religious freedom. His 
great work as a prelate was in holding the Catholic 
Church of his district steady through many difficult years, 
and in promoting the educational efforts that were essen- 
tial to its continued welfare. Though he had not unusual 
learning or extraordinary talent as a writer, his revision of 
the Rheims and Douay Bible has been altered only in 
details; and his other publications of various sorts have 
given him a place as eminent in Catholic literature as the 
position he won in Catholic history by the wisdom and 
devotion of his leadership. Obscurely though he lived in 
the London of his day, his work has been of lasting 
significance. 

The first of his books that dealt with ecclesiastical biog- 
raphy was the Memoirs of Missionary Priests, as well secu- 
lar as regular, and of other Catholics of both sexes that have 
suffered death in England, on religious accounts, from the 
year of our Lord 1577 to 1 68^. The scope of the work is per- 



336 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

fectly indicated by the long title. It showed the patriotic 
trend of Challoner's mind, which was to find expression in 
later writings and in his efforts to restore English saints to 
the calendar. The Memoirs, published in 1741-42, went 
through many editions and was reprinted as lately as 
1878. More ambitious was his Britannia Sancta: or the 
Lives of the Most Celebrated British, English, Scottish and 
Irish Saints, which he issued in 1745, a work of solid and 
painstaking scholarship that is still valuable for its well- 
documented sketches of the heroes of the British Church. 
Challoner was indefatigable in research, and his historical 
judgment was amazingly sound. His statement concern- 
ing St. Neot, for example, that we have no account which 
can be relied on, shows how far he excelled in acuteness 
most scholars of his day. A quotation from the preface 
will at once illustrate his style and the temper of his per- 
sonality. "As to the motives that induce us to publish 
these Lives, we hope they are no other than the glory of 
God, the honour of his Saints, the information of our 
Countrymen (who for the generality are but little ac- 
quainted with this part of British history), and their edifi- 
cation. We are not insensible of the prejudices under 
which many of them labour with regard to the Saints and 
their miracles; which leave us but little hope of this work 
being of any service to them : but we flatter ourselves that 
others may, with the divine Blessing, be benefited by the 
perusal of these sheets." 

The Britannia Sancta never reached a large audience. 
Challoner's remaining hagiographical works, however, 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 337 

were popular in aim. The Wonders of God in the Wilder- 
ness; or the Lives of the most celebrated Saints of the Oriental 
Deserts (1755) was a summary account of twenty-eight of 
the hermit-saints, which was frequently re-published 
down to the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1757 he 
issued an abridged and modernized version of Woodhead's 
Life of St. Teresa, and in 1761 A Memorial of Ancient 
British Piety, which covered in brief space the ground of 
the Britannia Sancta. Taken all in all, Challoner's lives of 
saints, though they were not brilliant, formed a body of 
writings of exceptional value. Like iElfric in the tenth 
century, he wrote with pure devotion to truth and to the 
widest possible diffusion of truth. Somewhat more than 
his present meed of fame should properly be his. 

The work of Alban Butler, with which eighteenth cen- 
tury hagiography reached its climax, was recognized at 
once as of outstanding value, and it has never lost the 
admiration which it excited from the first. Like Chal- 
loner, Butler was educated at Douay, and there he laid 
the foundations of an erudition as extensive as it was ex- 
act. His studies were furthered during his tenure of a pro- 
fessorship at the English College, but he did not publish 
his magnum opus until he had travelled extensively and 
had served as a missioner in England. Later, as president 
of the English College at St. Omer, he became involved in 
executive business which prevented him from any further 
biographical publication, save The Life of Mary of the 
Cross; but he continued his studies devotedly till his death 
in 1773, at the age of sixty-three. 



338 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal 
Saints. Compiled from Original Monuments and Authentic 
Records, on which he had been at work for many years, 
was published in four volumes between 1756 and 1759. 
It is difficult to speak of this magnificent work in tones of 
measured praise. Most of the author's learning, which 
seems to have been extraordinary along many lines, was 
not perpetuated in print; but a rich harvest of it went to 
the making of The Lives of the Saints. The book is the 
great classic of modern English Catholicism, and it is 
time-defying in the same way as is the history of Butler's 
great contemporary, Gibbon. Indeed, even Gibbon had a 
good word to say of "the sense and learning" that it dis- 
plays. It contains more than fifteen hundred biographies 
and monographs, each of which, there is no exaggeration 
in declaring, was the product of careful study. That But- 
ler made mistakes cannot, of course, be denied. His com- 
mand of documents was far less complete than ours; and 
his judgment was not infallible. Nevertheless, the accu- 
racy of his work is as astonishing as its range of informa- 
tion. Two statements from his "introductory discourse" 
well illustrate his attitude of mind, which was at once 
devout and critical. "The compiler's first care in this 
work hath been a most scrupulous attachment to truth, 
the foundation or rather the soul of all history, especially 
of that which tends to the advancement of piety and reli- 
gion." "The original authors are chiefly our guides. The 
stream runs clear and pure from the source, which in a 
long course often contracts a foreign mixture; but the 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 339 

lucubrations of many judicious modern critics have cast a 
great light upon ancient historians : these, therefore, have 
been also consulted and compared, and their labours fully 
made use of." 

Had The Lives of the Saints been merely a great monu- 
ment of scholarship, it would have held its place by its 
sterling qualities, but it would have failed to become the 
classic that it actually is. "For,*' as Butler himself wrote, 
"unless a narration be supported with some degree of 
dignity and spirit, and diversified by the intermixture of 
various events, it deserves not the name of history; no 
more than a plot of ground can be called a garden, which 
is neither variegated with parterres of flowers, nor check- 
ered with walks and beds of useful herbs or shrubs." Al- 
ban Butler's practice in writing, like his theory, was of the 
mid-eighteenth century. It can be accounted none the 
worse for that. To a remarkable degree, his style is "sup- 
ported" with "dignity and spirit." It is never monot- 
onous, and it has the easy, solid dignity of the best prose 
of his time. What his nephew wrote of him has never been 
put more justly: "Few authors, on holy subjects, have 
possessed, in a higher degree, that indescribable charm of 
style which rivets the reader's attention to the book, 
which never places the writer between the book and the 
reader, but insensibly leads him to the conclusion, some- 
times delighted, but always attentive and pleased." 
Whether The Lives of the Saints be read as a book of devo- 
tion or of history, whether by the man of doubting or of 
believing mind, it cannot well fail to attract and give 



340 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

profit. To any person of discretion and taste the clear dry 
light of the author's personality has an abiding charm. 
Butler's great work is the masterpiece of modern English 
hagiography : an almost inexhaustible treasury of learning, 
the wealth of which is arranged with consummate skill. 

Since Butler's day, several tendencies or movements 
have been responsible for an increase of general interest 
in the lives of saints, with a corresponding increase in the 
writing of them. These may well be separately examined, 
though a detailed description of the works in which they 
have resulted is scarcely necessary. 

First of all, the emancipation of English Catholics from 
civil and legal disabilities by the successive acts of 1778, 
1791, and 1829 helped greatly in promoting the vigorous 
growth of the Church, which was a notable phenomenon 
of nineteenth century England. With the restoration of 
the hierarchy in 1850, the Catholic Church took its place 
once more as a powerful influence in the religious life of 
the nation. It emerged from the shadowed existence that 
it had been compelled to endure for a very long period. 
After 1791, indeed, when it became permissible for Cath- 
olics to celebrate their rites openly, the new era began. 
From that time books of devotion multiplied, and among 
such books saints' lives. It cannot justly be maintained, 
I think, that the literature thus developed has been intrin- 
sically remarkable. It has been largely devoted to reli- 
gious instruction, without much regard to form; and it 
has, on the other hand, been too often heedless of the 
standards of historical study that modern hagiology must 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 341 

observe. No great Catholic poet has risen to envelop the 
lives of saints with new glory; no master of prose — to 
Newman's work I shall refer in another connection — has 
compelled the attention of men to the significance of 
saintly biography; and English Catholic scholars have 
contributed surprisingly little to sound hagiography in 
the recent past, though they are now doing their part with 
the same spirit as the devoted Bollandists. It is a hopeful 
sign that latterly the level of Catholic books of instruction 
and popularization has been raised, until they have be- 
come quite generally worthy of praise. This is as true in 
America as in England. 

There can be no doubt that the so-called Oxford Move- 
ment, in the second place, did much to relieve saints' lives 
of the stigma with which they had been marked by Pro- 
testant disapproval. The Tractarians and their followers, 
whether they embraced Catholicism or remained faithful 
to the Anglican communion, were ardent in their devotion 
to the saints, and gradually modified the attitude of a 
very considerable section of the public towards saintly 
biography. As a document of the movement, The Lives of 
the English Saints, & series projected by Cardinal Newman 
before he left the Church of England, and never com- 
pleted, has greater importance than it has in and of itself. 
Newman conceived the idea of getting some of his com- 
panions and disciples to write biographies of the English 
saints, partly, it appears, that they might find an outlet, 
other than theological, for their religious energy. Yet he 
had in mind also, as is clear from his prospectus issued in 



342 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

1843, to emphasize the national character of the ancient 
Church in England, and to stir Anglicans to pride in its 
achievements. He drew up a tentative list of about three 
hundred names, proposing that more or less than this 
number of lives should be published, as circumstances 
permitted. In point of fact, Newman withdrew from the 
editorship of the series after two parts had been issued; 
and only thirty-three lives ever appeared. 

Although Newman accepted responsibility for nothing 
save the impulse to the project, and himself contributed 
two brief legends only, the work very properly bears his 
name. He selected the authors of the various biographies 
and, what is even more important, so impressed his point 
of view upon them that they wrote with extraordinary 
unity of purpose and similarity of style. Very seldom has 
a group of men, even when trained in the same university 
and subjected to the same influences, been able to produce 
a composite of such an even texture. The reason for this, 
of course, was that Newman's personality dominated his 
twelve associates and, to a remarkable degree, formed 
their manner. Yet they were men of very different na- 
tures, as is shown by their subsequent careers. To have 
driven J. A. Froude and Dalgairns, F. W. Faber and Mark 
Pattison, Bishop Coffin and Dean Church in equal har- 
ness is an astounding feat. Most of the group were young, 
to be sure, and all of them were caught for the time in the 
same religious current; but they could not have worked 
with such unanimity of purpose except under a great 
leader, which Newman undoubtedly was. 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 343 

Intrinsically, The Lives of the English Saints have no 
great merit as examples of hagiography. The writers were 
hampered by a somewhat amusing consciousness of their 
Catholicism; they felt it necessary to explain at every turn 
either that they believed in the historical truth of their 
narratives, or that they considered them "symbols of the 
invisible" and therefore very truth. There is thus evident 
in most of the lives something that seems not quite genu- 
ine. It is not flippant, I think, to say that the Tractarians 
were heirs of the Romanticists in respect to certain of the 
less noble qualities found in each group : the attitudiniz- 
ing, the exaltation of the past for its own sake, and the 
subordination of fact to feeling. Certainly men trained 
at Oxford should not have been guilty of the gross errors 
that disfigure some of the critical discussions in the Lives. 
Yet it must be remembered that they were, explicitly, re- 
telling old legends, not writing historical essays. Perhaps 
the one really vicious characteristic of most of the lives 
in the series is the false air of learning that they parade. 
Without being in any way scholarly, they seem to be. On 
the other hand, as narratives they are nearly all well 
managed; and their luminous if somewhat artificial style 
gives them a certain literary significance. I do not wish to 
minimize their value or to deny the reverence with which 
they were composed; but it would be unjust not to 
point out their inferiority to Challoner's work in the same 
field. 

Though n^ne of the thirteen contributors to Newman's 
Lives left the Church of England, the beginning they 



344 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

made within that Church was of lasting importance. 
Hagiography regained something of the dignity that it 
had lost at the Reformation. Henceforward it was per- 
mitted to devout members of the communion to cherish 
the memory of the saints; and it became possible for them 
to read and to write saintly biography with intentions 
other than antiquarian. There has grown up an Anglican 
devotional literature, parallel to the Roman Catholic, in 
which the lives of saints have a not unimportant place. 
These books have not been, for the most part, distin- 
guished by unusual learning or by exceptional literary 
power; but they have served their purpose admirably. 
They have scarcely revived the moribund genre, yet they 
have gradually educated Anglicans and the Episcopalians 
of America in the legends of the Church. 

Such a comprehensive work, for example, as S. Baring- 
Gould's Lives of the Saints, the first edition of which was 
published in 1872-77, could not have been made by an 
English clergyman except for the impulse of which I have 
been speaking. The industrious compiler's aim, as stated 
in his preface, was partly devotional, partly scholarly, and 
partly aesthetic : a compound characteristic of many other 
less ambitious works of popularization. Some three thou- 
sand six hundred memoirs are included in the collection. 
The legends are fluently and pleasantly narrated, without 
evident bias and with excellent taste. Exact and critical 
scholarship is not to be found in them; they were written 
with less care than Butler's Lives, and by a less accom- 
plished scholar. Nevertheless, they serve their turn for 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 345 

reading and for reference by those not too exigent in their 
demands. 

One phrase in Baring-Gould's preface leads me to speak 
of a curious modern development in connection with 
legends. He says that he has chosen to narrate certain 
miracles for various reasons, among the reasons being 
"because they are often represented in art." As a matter 
of fact, to a very considerable section of the Protestant 
public in England and America the saints are chiefly 
known "because they are often represented in art." As 
knowledge of the older painters has been diffused, a con- 
siderable literature has been formed to give instruction 
about the legendary scenes they portray. I am not speak- 
ing, of course, of systematic studies in iconography, a 
field which Protestant and Catholic scholars have latterly 
cultivated in sufficient harmony, but of works more 
vaguely defined in purpose and less searching in method. 
Mrs. Anna M. Jameson, whose Sacred and Legendary Art 
and its companion volumes are widely known, was at once 
a pioneer and an able compiler of books designed to render 
the service I have mentioned. 

Another impulse towards the study of hagiology in 
England and America has come about through historical 
scholarship. The modern historian, with at least the desire 
to include impartially within his field of investigation all 
phases of life in the past, has turned his attention to the 
lives of the great saints. Whatever his religious creed, he 
has learned in the spirit of the Bollandists themselves to 
search patiently for the truth. His efforts have been ably 



346 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

seconded by scholars whose chief interest has been in the 
successive stages of the English language or in the history 
of literature. Such monuments of scholarship as the Rolls 
Series and the publications of the Early English Text 
Society, among many others, have done much to further 
our knowledge of documents and to foster an intelligent 
attitude towards saints' lives. Out of these efforts to bring 
to light all the facts in the history of the British Isles have 
come at least a few notable examples of modern hagiog- 
raphy at its best. Such works as the Memorials of St. 
Dunstan by the late Bishop Stubbs and Professor Bury's 
St. Patrick leave little to be desired for carefulness of in- 
vestigation and sympathy of treatment. Monographs 
like these cannot be regarded as pure literature, it is true, 
but they conform to the most ancient purposes for which 
the lives of saints were written. Better than such roman- 
tically tinged legends as the Tractarians wrote, they rep- 
resent the true spirit of hagiography, to which letters have 
always been a servant and not a master. In spite of aber- 
rations, the main reason for the existence of saints' lives 
throughout their long history has been the perpetuation 
of the truth. In our day, certainly, the only hope of re- 
storing saintly biography to universal repute lies in sub- 
mitting it to all the tests that scholarship has devised. 
Once it has been placed in the clearest light, the nobility 
of the record will compel men to listen attentively. 

Finally, a word must be said concerning the share that 
the English Romanticists of the early nineteenth century 
had in moderating, at least, the prejudices of Protestant 



THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 347 

readers against legends of the saints. Some of the Ro- 
manticists, to be sure, included Christianity among the 
institutions that had to be destroyed in the name of lib- 
erty; Byron and Shelley, for example, cannot precisely 
be accounted defenders of the faith. Yet the prevailing 
temper of Romanticism in literature favored a return 
upon ancient traditions, and to the degree that it did so 
found the lives of saints sympathetic material. Allusions 
to the saints by English poets grew common as soon as 
Romanticism became the sovereign literary mood, though 
neither by the Romanticists nor by their successors have 
saints' lives been narrated with commanding success. 
Sympathy, one must suppose, has outrun real knowledge. 
Lyrical reference, indeed, has been more frequent than 
the attempt to write legends in verse. John Keble, whose 
Christian Year was published in 1827, had the temper for 
the task, but he wrote hymns instead. It is to be doubted, 
moreover, whether his sense of form would have been 
adequate to rehabilitate the type. Certainly the poems of 
Aubrey Thomas De Vere, though sufficiently conscien- 
tious, did not accomplish this. Saints' lives have not re- 
gained in pure literature, whether verse or prose, the 
place they lost when the schism of the sixteenth century 
rent the western world apart. 

Whether a literary type that has for so long been mori- 
bund among the English-speaking races will ever again 
become a powerful factor in letters we have no means of 
knowing. It is permitted the lover of saintly lore, how- 
ever, to trust that this may sometime come to pass. 



348 SAINTS' LEGENDS 

The modern world has much to learn from the veritable 
lives of the saints, as they are revealed through critical 
scholarship; and it could find things of profit to civiliza- 
tion even in the legends that have grown up about their 
lives. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following bibliography is designed to serve as a guide to 
the student or general reader who may wish to investigate more 
in detail the works treated in the body of the book. It may also 
help the student to discriminate between diverse treatments of 
the same legend ; a matter of considerable difficulty and of some 
importance. It has been made selective rather than inclusive 
in character, partly because of limitations in space and partly, 
too, because unnecessary multiplication of references befogs the 
student in the early stages of his work. 

CHAPTER I 

DEFINITION AND USE 

No better discussion of definitions could be wished than that 
found in Les Legendes hagiographiques by H. Delehaye, 1905, of 
which a second edition appeared in 1906. Translated by Mrs. 
N. M. Crawford as The Legends of the Saints, 1907. Of value in 
forming opinions on the same subject are H. Achelis, Die 
Martyr ologien, ihre Geschichte und ihr Wert, 1900, in Abhandl. 
d. k. Gesells. d. Wissens. zu Gottingen, n.f. hi; E. Lucius, 
ed. G. Anrich, Die Anfdnge des Heiligenkults in der christlichen 
Kirche, 1904; H. Glinter, Legenden-Studien, 1906, and Die 
christliche Legende des Abendlandes, 1910; the article Legende 
by E. von Dobschlitz in the Realencyklopddie fur protestantische 
Theologie; and the article Legends of the Saints by H. Giinter in 
The Catholic Encyclopedia. 

CHAPTER II 

ORIGINS AND PROPAGATION 

To the questions raised in this chapter M. Delehaye' s Les 
LSgendes hagiographiques is incomparably the safest guide yet 
written. The works by Giinter and Lucius-Anrichs, previously 



352 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

cited, are also serviceable, though the latter presents a radical 
view sustained by specious analogies. To be read with caution 
are likewise such works as L. Saintyves, Les Saints successeurs 
des dieux, 1907, and A. van Gennep, La Formation des ISgendes, 
1910. P. Allard, Dix leqons sur le martyre, 3d ed. 1907 (trans- 
lated 1907, by L. Cappadelta, as Ten Lectures on the Martyrs), 
and H. Leclerq, Les Martyrs, 1902-06, will be found useful. For 
conditions in the later Middle Ages a valuable book is L. Zoepf, 
Das Heiligen-Leben im 10. Jahrhundert, 1908. 

As to authentic passions of the early martyrs, see Ruinart, 
Acta Martyrum Sincera, 1689, Leclerq, work cited, and Har- 
nack, Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur, 1904, n, 
463-82. 

The texts of the apocryphal New Testament stories may be 
found in Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha, 2d ed., 1876, and 
R. A. Lipsius and M. Bonnet, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, 
1891-1903. In translation by B. H. Cowper, The Apocryphal 
Gospels, 1867, and A. Walker, Ante-Nicene Christian Library, 
xvi (viii of American edition). See Lipsius, Die apokryphen 
Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden, 1883-90. 

The case of St. Catharine of Alexandria may be studied in 
Viteau, Passions des saints Ecaterine et Pierre d'Alexandrie, 
1897; Narbey, Supplement aux Acta Sanctorum, n (1904); H. 
Knust, Geschichte der Legenden der h. Katharina von Alexandrien, 
1890; H. Varnhagen, Zur Geschichte der Legende der Katharina 
von Alexandrien, in Festschrift der Univ. Erlangen zur Feier des 
achtzigsten Geburtstages sr. kn. H. d. Prinz-regenten Luitpold von 
Bayern, 1901. 

As to Amphibalus, see J. Loth in Revue Celtique, xi, 348-49. 
For the supposed letter of Lucius of Britain, see Harnack, iu 
Sitzungsberichte der k. preussischen Akad. der Wissenschaften, 
1904, pp. 909-16. For an account of the controversy concerning 
the apostolic foundation of the Church in Gaul, see Houtin, La 
Controverse de V apostolicite de VEglise de France, 3d ed. 1903, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 353 

and L. Duchesne, Fastes ipiscopaux de Vancienne Gaule, 1894. 
With regard to gods, heroes, and saints, consult, in addition to 
such works as those by Delehaye, Lucius-Anrichs, Saintyves, 
and Giinter, H. Usener, Legenden der heiligen Pelagia, 1879, and 
Die Sintflutsagen, 1899; G. Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen 
in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum, 1894; and M. Mayer, 
Ueber die Verwandtschaft heidnischer und christlischer Drachento- 
ter, in Verhandl. der 4-0. Versamm. deutscher Phil., 1890, pp. 
336-48. In connection with Barlaam, read E. Kuhn, Bar- 
laam und Joasaph in Abhandlungen der k. bayer. Akad. der Wiss. 
xx (1893). 

The best work on miraculous portraits and the like is E. von 
Dobschutz, Christusbilder, 1899. See also W. Creizenach, 
Legenden und Sagen von Pilatus in Paul und Braune's Beitrage, 
I (1874). For iconography, inscriptions, and legend, see Pio 
Franchi de' Cavalieri, / martirii di S. Teodote e di S. Ariadne y 
Studi e Testi, vi; J. Fiirst, Philologus, lxi, 374-440; and L. 
Duchesne, Revue des Questions historiques, xxxiv, 5-33. 

For Byzantine influences Der griechische Roman, 1876, and 
Psyche, 1890-94, by E. Rohde, are the most important studies. 
To the considerable literature concerned with St. Alexis, M. 
Rosier, Die Fassungen der Alexius-Leg ende, Wiener Beitrage, 
xxi (1905), will serve as a guide. The origins of St. Eustace are 
discussed in G. H. Gerould, Forerunners, Congeners, and Deriv- 
atives of the Eustace Legend, Publications of the Mod. Lang. 
Ass. xix (1905), 335-448. 

Upon almost all questions concerning the development of 
saints' lives, the files of the Analecta Bollandiana can throw 
some light. Similarly, all students of legend should know the 
two catalogues issued by the Bollandists: Bibliotheca hagiogra- 
phica grmca seu Elenchus Vitarum sanctorum, 1895, and Biblio- 
theca hagiographica latina antique et media? atatis, 1898-1901, 
with their supplements. 



354 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER III 

THE EPIC LEGEND IN OLD ENGLISH 

Much has been written concerning the Christian literature of 
the Anglo-Saxon, but little of value that gives a general view of 
it. The reader will find helpful Anglo-Saxon Christian Poetry, 
an Address delivered . . . at Leiden, October 12, 1907, by A. J. 
Barnouw, translated by L. Dudley, 1914. Too mechanical in 
method to be of much value is G. A. Smithson, The Old English 
Christian Epic, 1910. H. Williams, Christianity in Early Britain, 
1912, will be found helpful in getting the historical background 
into mind. No treatment of the legendary portion of the litera- 
ture, as such, has hitherto been issued. A brief selection of 

\ 
references to the voluminous publications concerning particular 

poems and authors can best be given in the order in which they 
are discussed above. 

Page 55. As to St. Alban, see W. Meyer, Die Legende des h. 
Albanus des Protomartyr Angliae in Texten vor Beda in Abhand- 
lungen der k. Gesellschaft der Wiss. zu Gottingen, n.f. viii (1904). 

Page 58. The reader should know, not only the monumental 
edition of Bede by C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera His- 
torica, 1896, but the translation by A. M. Sellar, Bedes Ecclesi- 
astical History, 1907. 

Pages 62-89. Cynewulf and the Cynewulfian poems. All the 
poems mentioned are to be found in Grein-Wulker, Bibliothek 
der angelsachsischen Poesie. Separate editions of the several 
poems are the following: W. Strunk, Juliana, 1904; F. Hol- 
thausen, Elene, 1905; G. P. Krapp, Andreas and the Fates of the 
Apostles, 1906. They may be conveniently read in translation 
in C. W. Kennedy, The Poems of Cynewulf, 1910. 

The student will find the bibliography of Karl Jansen, Die 
Cynewulf -F or schung, 1908 {Bonner Beitrage zur Anglistik, xxiv), 
and Zts. f. d. Alterthum, xxxin, 70-73 convenient. Important 
studies are the following : A. S. Napier, The Old English Poem 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 355 

"The Fates of the Apostles" Academy, Sept. 8, 1888; M. Traut- 
mann, Kynewulf der Bischof und Dichter, 1898 (Bonner Beitrage, 
i); the introduction to A. S. Cook, The Christ of Cynewulf, 
1900; H. Forstmann, Untersuchungen zur Guthlac-legende, 1902 
{Bonner Beitrage, xn); C. F. Brown, Cynewulf and Alcuin in 
Publications of the Mod. Lang. Ass. xviii, 308-34 (1903) ; F. 
Holthausen, Zur Quelle von Cynewulf s Elene in Zeitschrift fur 
deutsche Philologie, xxxvii, 1-19 (1905); G. Sarrazin, Zur 
Chronologie und V erf asserf rage angelsachsischer Dichtungen in 
Englische Studien, xxxvin, 145-95 (1907); C. F. Brown, The 
Autobiographical Element in the Cynewulfian Rune Passages in 
Engl. Stud, xxxvin, 196-233; and C. F. Brown, Irish-Latin 
Influence in Cynewulfian Texts in Engl. Stud, xl, 1-29 (1909). 

Page 91. The Harrowing of Hell from the Exeter Book may 
be read in Grein-Wiilker, in, 175-80, and J. Cramer, Quelle, 
Verfasser und Text des altengl. Gedichtes Christi Hbllenfahrt in 
Anglia, xix, 137-74 (1896). Consult J. H. Kirkland, A Study 
of the Anglo-Saxon Poem the Harrowing of Hell, 1885. The Har- 
rowing of Hell from the Junian MS. is to be found in Grein- 
Wiilker, ii, 558-62. See F. Groschopp, Anglia, vi, 248-76 (1883). 

Page 93. The verses on Edward the Confessor are found in the 
versions of the Chronicle supposed to come from Abingdon and 
Worcester. Printed in Earle and Plummer, Two of the Saxon 
Chronicles, 1892, i, 192-95. The poetical Menology is found in 
the Abingdon Chronicle and printed by Earle and Plummer, i, 
273-82. See also R. Imelmann, Das altengl. Menologium, 1902, 
and E. Sokoll, Anglia Beiblatt, xiv, 307-15. 

CHAPTER IV 

PROSE LEGENDS BEFORE THE CONQUEST 

Page 95. See W. Reeves, The Life of St. Columba, Founder of 
Hy, written by Adamnan, 1857; J. T. Fowler, Adamnani Vita 
S. Columbae, 1894; W. Huyshe, The Life of St. Columba. Newly 
translated from the Latin, 1906. 



356 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Page 97. Ealdhelm's works are accessible in Migne, Patro- 
logia Curs. Comp. Lat. lxxxix, 65-314. 

Page 103. For Vita Wilfridi Episcopi auctore Eddio Stephano, 
see J. Raine, The Historians of the Church of York, 1879, i, 1-103 
(Rolls Ser. 71). Consult B. W. Wells, English Historical Re- 
view, vi, 535-50 (1901). 

Page 104. See F. A. Gasquet, A Life of Pope St. Gregory the 
Great written by a Monk of the Monastery of Whitby, 1904, and 
H. Moretus, Anal. Boll, xxvi, 66-72. 

Page 105. For the Vita S. Guthlaci by Felix, see Acta Sane- 
torum, Apr. n, 47. Alcuin's De Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesice 
Eboracensis Carmen may be found in J. Raine, work cited, i, 
349-98. 

Page 107. Lantfred's Translatio et Miracula S. Swithini is 
printed in Acta Sanct. Jul. i, 328-37, and by E. P. Sauvage in 
Anal. Boll, iv, 367-410 (1885). See Gerould, Mfric's Legend of 
St. Swithin in Anglia, n.f. xx, 347-57. 

Page 108. The early life of St. Dunstan is to be found in W. 
Stubbs, Memorials of Saint Dunstan, 1874, pp. 3-52 (Rolls Ser. 
63). 

Page 110. See T. Miller, The Old-English Version of Bede's 
Ecclesiastical History, 1890-91 (E. E. T. S. 95, 96). The prose 
Martyrology has been printed by G. Herzfeld, An Old English 
Martyrology, 1899 (E. E. T. S. 116). Consult M. Foerster, 
Anzeiger fiir deutsches Alterthum, xxvn, 275. 

Page 111. For the life of St. Chad, see A. S. Napier, Ein 
altenglische Leben des h. Chad in Anglia, x, 131-56 (1888). 

Page 112. The translation of Felix's life of St. Guthlac is 
most readily accessible in P. Gonser, Das angelsdchsische Prosa- 
Leben des hi. Guthlac, 1909 (Anglistische Forschungen, 27). See 
R. Morris, The Blickling Homilies, 1874-80 (E. E. T. S. 58, 
63, 73). Consult M. Foerster, Archiv f. d. Studium d. n. 
Sprachen, xci, 179-206 (1893), and A. S. Napier, Modern Phi- 
lology, i, 303-08. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 357 

Pages 114-15. For St. Mildred, see 0. Cockayne, Leechdoms, 
1864-66, in, 422-32 (Rolls Ser. 35). For The Saints of England, 
see F. Liebermann, Die Heiligen Englands, 1889. For the Pas- 
sion of St. Quentin, see M. Foerster, Arch.f. d. Stud. d. n. Syr. 
cvi, 258-61 (1901). 

Pages 115-21. iElfric. See C. L: White, Mfric: a New Study 
of his Life and Writings, 1898 (Yale Studies, n). Catholic Homi- 
lies edited by B. Thorpe, The Homilies of Mfric, 1844-46; Pas- 
sions by W. W. Skeat, Mfric" s Lives of Saints, 1881-1900 (E. E. 
T. S. 76, 82, 94, 114). Consult M. Foerster, Ueber die Quellen 
von Mfric' s Homiliae Catholicae, 1892, as well as Anglia, xvi, 1- 
61, and Engl. Stud, xxviii, 423. For the third series, see J. H. 
Ott, Ueber die Quellen der Heiligenleben in Mfric s Lives of 
Saints, 1892; J. Zupitza, Zts. f. d. Alterthum, xxix, 269-96; 
Gerould, Anglia, n.f. xx, 347-57. 

Page 122. Wulfstan. See A. S. Napier, Wulfstan, 1883, and 
Ueber die Werke des altenglischen Erzbischofs Wulfstan, 1882. 
V Also J. P. Kinard, A Study of Wulfstan' s Homilies, 1897. 

Page 123. Jamnes and Mambres, ed. M. Foerster, Arch.f. d. 
Stud. d. n. Spr. cvm, 15-28 (1902). Pseudo-Matthew, ed. B. Ass- 
mann, Bibliothek d. ags. Prosa, in, 117-37. For the Gospel of 
Nicodemus, see W. H. Hulme, Publications Mod. Lang. Ass. t-^ 
xin, 457-541 (1898), and Modern Phil, i, 579-614 (1904), as 
well as M. Foerster, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. evil, 311-21 
(1901). For Vindicta Salvatoris, see B. Assmann, Bibl. d. ags. 
Prosa, in, 181-92. 

Pages 123-24. See A. S. Napier, The History of the Holy 
Rood-Tree, 1894 (E. E. T. S. 103). For the Discovery of the 
Sacred Cross, see R. Morris, Legends of the Holy Rood, 1871 
(E. E. T. S. 46). Tales from the Vitae Patrum, ed. by B. Ass- 
mann, Bibl. d. ags. Prosa, in, 195-207; the Malchus also by 
W. H. Hulme, Journal of Germanic Philology, i, 431-41 (1897). 

Pages 125-26. St. Michael is to be found in MS. Corp. Chr. 
Coll. Camb. 41. For St. Christopher, see E. Einenkel, Anglia, 



358 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

xvii, 110-22 (1895). Of the Passion of St Margaret the three ver- 
sions were: (1) MS. Cott. Tib. A. 3, ed. O. Cockayne, Narratiun- 
culae, 1861, pp. 39-49; (2) MS. Cott. Otho B. 10 (burnt); and 
(3) MS. Corp. Chr. Coll. Camb. 303, ed. B. Assmann, Bibl. d. 
ags.Prosa, in, 170-80. St. Giles and St. Nicholas are to be found 
in MS. Corp. Chr. Coll. Camb. 303. For the Vision of Leofric, 
see A. S. Napier, Transactions Philological Soc, 1908, pp. 180- 
88. 

Page 126. Life of St. Neot ed. by O. Cockayne, The Shrine, 
1864, pp. 12-17, and by R. Wulker, Anglia, in, 102-114 (1880). 
Consult W. H. Stevenson, Assers Life of King Alfred, 1904, 
pp. 256-61. 

CHAPTER V 

NEW INFLUENCES: FRANCE AND THE CULT OF THE VIRGIN 

Page 133. See P. Meyer, Legendes hagiographiques en Frangais 
in Histoire litt. de la France, xxxiii, 328-458 (1906). 

Page 134. As to St. Eustace, see Gerould, Publ. Mod. Lang. 
Ass. xix, 335-448 (1905) ; as to the Gregory legend, J. D. Bruce, 
Historia Meriadoci and De Ortu Waluuanii, 1913, pp. xli-lv. 

Pages 135-37, The versions of St. Margaret, as far as pub- 
lished, are found in A. Scheler, Deux redactions diverses de la 
Ugende de ste. Marguerite, 1877; A. Joly, La vie de ste. Mar- 
guerite, 1879 (by Wace); and F. Spencer, La vie de ste. Mar- 
guerite, 1887. For the St. Alban, see R. Atkinson, Vie de seint 
Auban, 1876. The later life of St. Edmund by Denis Piramus, 
ed. T. Arnold, Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, 1890-96 (Rolls 
Ser. 96). One version of St. Edward the Confessor, ed. H. R. 
Luard, Lives of Edward the Confessor, 1858 (Rolls Ser. 3). 
Modwenna, ed. in part by H. Suchier, Vie de seint Auban, 1876, 
pp. 54-58. For St. Brendan, see F. Michel, Les Voyages mer- 
veilleux de s. Brandan, 1888, and H. Suchier, Roman. Stud. I, 
567. For the Purgatory of St. Patrick by Marie de France, see 
T. A. Jenkins, L ' Espurgatoire saint Patriz, 2d ed. 1903, and L. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 359 

Foulet, Roman. Forschungen, xxn, 599-627. The lives of St. 
Thomas of Canterbury may be found in Hippeau, La Vie de s. 
Thomas le martyr, 1859, and F. Michel, Chroniques des dues de 
Normandie, 1844, in, 461. For the legends by Wace, aside from 
the Ste. Marguerite already cited, see N. Delius, Maistre Wace's 
St. Nicholas, 1850, and V. Luzarche, La Vie de la Vierge Marie 
de maitre Wace, 1859. As to Adgar, see C. Neuhaus, Marien- 
legenden, 1886 (Altfran. Bibl. 9), W. Rolfs, Roman. Forsch. i, 179- 
236, and J. A. Herbert, Romania, xxxii, 394-421. For Nicole 
de Bozon, see L. T. Smith and P. Meyer, Les Contes moralisSs, 
1889. For the Catherine d'Alexandrie, see M. U. Jarnik in 
Memoirs of Acad, of Sciences, Prague, 1894. For the verse trans- 
lation of Vitae Patrum by Henri d'Arci, see P. Meyer, Notices et 
extraits, xxxv, l re partie, 137 jf. 

Pages 138-39. As to Robert de Gretham, see H. Varnhagen, 
Zts.f. r. Phil, i, 541-45; P. Meyer, Romania, vn, 345, xv, 296- 
305, xxxii, 28-37, xxxv, 63-67. 

Page 140. For Goscelin, see Hist. litt. de la France, viii, 660- 
77, and Migne, Pair. Curs. Comp. Lat. clv, 9-120. 

Pages 141-42. For Eadmer, see Wharton, Anglia Sacra, 1691, 
M. Rule, Historia Novorum, 1884 (Rolls Ser. 81), and F. Lieber- 
mann, Ungedruckte Anglo-N ormannische Geschichtsquelle, 1879, 
pp. 282-317. For Ailred, see Migne, Patr. Curs. Comp. Lat. 
exev, 195-796. For John of Salisbury, see J. C. Robertson, 
Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, 1875-85, n, 299- 
322 (Rolls Ser. 67). 

Pages 143-44. For Giraldus, see J. S. Brewer, J. F. Dimock, 
and G. F. Warner, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, 1861-91 (Rolls 
Ser. 21). For Adam, see J. F. Dimock, Magna Vita S. Hugonis, 
1864 (Rolls Ser. 37). As to the matters under discussion, the 
reader may profitably consult E. A. Abbott, St. Thomas of 
Canterbury: His Death and Miracles, 1898, and H. Thurston, 
The Life of St. Hugh of Lincoln, 1898. For the lives of St. Ed- 
mund, see W. Wallace, Life of St. Edmund of Canterbury, 1893, 



360 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1-18. Extracts from the life of St. Gilbert may be found in 
Dugdale's Monasticon, 2d ed. 

Page 145. For the Purgatory of St. Patrick, see E. Mall, Zur 
Geschichte der Legende vom Purgatorium des heil. Patricias in 
Roman. Forsch. vi, 139-97 (1891). For the Vision of a Monk 
of Eynsham, see H. Thurston, The Life of St. Hugh of Lincoln, 
1898, pp. 348-56,617-21. 

Pages 146-50. Consult F. A. von Lehner, Die Marienve- 
rehrung in den ersten Jahrhunderten, 1886, and L. Zoepf, Das 
Heiligen-Leben, 1908. For Mary legends, specifically, see A. 
Mussafia, Studien zu den mittelalterlichen Marienlegenden in 
Wiener Sitzungsberichte der k. Akad. der Wissenschaften, 1887- 
98, also Denkschriften, xliv, 1896; and J. B. Haureau, many im- 
portant studies in Journal des Savants, Memoirs de I 'AcadSmie 
des Inscriptions, Notices et extraits, and Hist. litt. de la France. 

CHAPTER VI 

THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION. I 

A general account of the Middle English legend collections is 
to be found in the introduction to C. Horstmann, Altenglische 
Legenden, neue Folge, 1881. Horstmann had printed much of 
his information concerning the South-English Legendary in 
Altenglische Legenden, 1875. In spite of the defects of his work 
as editor and compiler, students of Middle English legends owe 
an incalculable debt to Dr. Horstmann. 

Page 152. South-English Legendary. MSS. containing the 
whole or a part of the collection, as far as known to me, are the 
following: — British Museum: Harl. 2277, 2250, 4012, Royal 
17, C. XVII, Stowe 669, Egerton 1993, Cott. Jul. D. IX, Cott. 
Calig. A. 2, Cott. Cleop. D. IX, Addit. 10301, 10626; Bodleian: 
Ashmole 43, Laud 108, Laud 463 (formerly L. 70), Vernon, 
Bodl. 779; Tanner 17, Rawl. poet. 225; Trinity, Oxford, 57; 
Trinity, Camb. R. 3. 25; Corp. Chr. Camb. 145; St. John's, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 361 

Camb. B. 6; King's, Camb. 15; Pepysian, Camb. 2344; Lambeth 
223; Auchinleck; Bedford; Phillipps 8253. 

Only one MS. has been printed in its entirety (Laud 108) by 
C. Horstmann, The Early South-English Legendary or Lives of 
Saints, 1887 (E. E. T. S. 87). The following legends have else- 
where been edited : — By F. J. Furnivall, Early English Poems 
and Lives of Saints, 1862, from Harl. 2277, Andrew, Catharine, 
Christopher, Dunstan, Edmund of East Anglia, Edmund of 
Abingdon, Kenelm, Lucy, Pilate, Swithin, Ursula, and from 
Laud 108, James the Greater (in part) ; by T. Wright, St. Brandan 
1844 (Percy Soc. 14), from Harl. 2277, Brendan; by C. Horst- 
mann, Jahrbuchf. rom. und engl. Spr. und Litt. n.f. i, 150-180, 
from Laud 108, Michael, n.f. ii, 32-41, from Laud 108, Chris- 
topher, Dunstan; by W. H. Black, The Life and Martyrdom of 
Thomas Becket, 1846 (Percy Soc. 19), from Harl. 2277, Thomas 
Becket; by Horstmann, Arch.f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. liii, 17-48, 
from Ashmole 43, Brendan; by Horstmann, Altenglische Leg- 
enden, 1875, pp. 64-109, from Ash. 43 and Egerton 1993, Birth 
of Jesus, pp. 113-48, from Bodl. 779, Barlaam, pp. 151-211, from 
Ash. 43, Egerton 1993, and Laud 108, Purgatory of St. Patrick; 
by O. Cockayne, Seinte Marherete, 1866, pp. 24-33, from Harl. 
2277, Margaret; by J. Earle, Gloucester Fragments, 1862, pp. 
78-81, from Laud 463 (with var. from Trin. Oxf . 57) Swithin; by 
W. B. D. D. Turnbull, Legendae Catholicae, 1840, from Auch., 
Birth of Mary; by Horstmann, Sammlung altengl. Leg., 1878, 
pp. 148-62, from Laud 108, Mary Magdalene; by Horstmann, 
Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxviii, 52-73, from Trin. Camb. 
R. 3. 25 and Lamb. 223, Mary Magdalene. The thirty-one addi- 
tional legends of Bodl. 779 were printed by Horstmann, Arch, 
f.d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxxxii, 307-53, 369-422 (1889). See also 
M. Balz, Die me. Brendan-leg ende des Gloucesterlegendars 
kritisch herausgegeben, 1909, and W. Schmidt, Ueber den stil der 
Legenden des MS. Laud 108, 1893. 

Page 159. For Robert of Gloucester, see W. A. Wright, The 



362 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, 1887 (Rolls Ser. 86); 
W. Ellmer, Anglia, x, 1-37, 291-322 (1888) ; and H. Strohmeyer, 
Der Stil der men. Reimchronik Roberts von Gloucester, 1891. 

Page 164. North-English Homily Collection. The MSS. con- 
taining the collection are the following: — (1) Original form: 
Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, Ch. 5. 21; Ashmole 42 
in the Bodleian; Lambeth 260; Camb. Univ. Libr. Gg V. 31, and 
Dd I. 1; Harl. 2391 and Addit. 38010 (formerly Phillipps 8254) 
in the Brit. Mus. ; Phillipps 8122 (now sold). (2) Expanded form 
(a) : Vernon in the Bodl., and Brit. Mus. Addit. 22283. (3) Ex- 
panded form (b) : Harl. 4196 and Cott. Tib. E. VII in the Brit. 
Mus. (4) Fragments: Eng. poet. C. 4 in the Bodl. and a MS. be- 
longing to Lord Robartes. See Napier, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. 
Spr. lxxxiv, 324. 

A complete edition of the work has not yet been made, though 
I have the materials at hand for a text of the original collection, 
to be issued by the E. E. T. S. The Edinburgh MS. was edited 
by J. Small, English Metrical Homilies, 1862 (with lacunae sup- 
plied from Camb. Univ. Gg V. 31 and Ash. 42). See Horstmann, 
Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 77-81, for Peter and Paul from Ash. 42 
and pp. 174-88, for Alexis from Ash. 42 and Camb. Univ. Gg 
V. 31. The gospel stories from MS. Vernon have been printed by 
Horstmann, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lvii, 241-316, and the 
Proprium Sanctorum from the same source and by the same 
editor in Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxxxi, 83-114, 299-321. 
The second part of the collection of MS. Harl. 4196 has been 
printed, with some omissions, by Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. 
n.f., pp. 1-173. 

See, further, O. Retzlaff , Untersuchungen uber den nordengli- 
schen Legendencyclus, 1888, O. Weber, The Language of the Eng- 
lish Metrical Homilies, 1902, and G. H. Gerould, The North- 
English Homily Collection, 1902. 

Page 175. The Passion of Our Lord has been edited by F. A. 
Foster, The Northern Passion, 1913-15 (E. E. T. S. 145, 147). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 363 

Page 176. Scottish Legend Collection. Found in MS. Camb. 
Univ. Libr. Gg II. 6. Edited by C. Horstmann, Barbour s des 
schottischen Nationaldichters Legendensammlung , 1881-82, and 
W. M. Metcalfe, Legends of the Saints in the Scottish Dialect, 
1896 (Scottish Text Soc). See P. Buss, Anglia, ix, 493-514, and 
E. Koeppel, Engl. Stud, x, 373. 

Page 184. Mirk's Festial. The following is at least a partial 
list of MSS.: Cott. Claud. A. II, Lansdowne 392, Harl. 2403, 
Harl. 2247, Harl. 2391, Cajus Coll. Camb. 168, Camb. Univ. 
Libr. Dd X. 50, Ff. H. 38, Ee II. 15, Nn III. 10, St. John's 
Coll. Camb. 9. 19 (from Rouen ed. of 1499), Bodl. Gough Eccl. 
Top. 4, Shrewsbury. Edited by T. Erbe, 1905, Pt. I only (E. E. 
T. S. XCVI). St. Alkmund printed by Horstmann, Altengl. 
Leg. n.f., pp. cxxiv-cxxvi. 

Page 188. Osbern Bokenam. Legends found in MS. Arundel 
347. Edited as The Lyuys of Seyntys for Roxburghe Club, 1835, 
and by C. Horstmann, Osbern Bokenam 's Legenden, 1883. See 
G. Willenberg, Engl. Stud, xii, 1-37 (1889). Mappula Angliae, 
ed. Horstmann, Engl. Stud, x, 1-41 (1887). 

Page 194. Legenda Aurea. Translation 1, of Vernon MS., ed. 
C. Horstmann, Sammlung altengl. Legenden, 1878, pp. 1-97. 
Translation 2, MSS. Egerton 876, Harl. 4755, Harl. 630, Douce 
372, Bodleian 596, Trim Coll. Dublin 319. Printed by Caxton 
as The Golden Legende, 1483. For later editions see P. Butler, 
Legenda Aurea, Legende dorSe, Golden Legend, 1899. 

Page 197. Nova Legenda Anglie, ed. C. Horstmann, 1901, with 
elaborate introduction. 

Page 199. Cursor Mundi, ed. R. Morris, 1874-93 (E. E. T. S. 
57, 59, 62, 66, 68, 99, 101). 

Page 200. Manuel des Pechiez and Handlyng Synne, ed. F. J. 
Furnivall, Roxburghe Club 1862; reissued by E. E. T. S. 119, 
123 (1901-03). 

Page 201. An Alphabet of Tales, ed. M. M. Banks, 1904-05 
(E. E. T. S. 126, 127). 



364 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER VII 

THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION. II 

Page 206. Vision of St. Paul. MS. Lambeth 487. See R. 
Morris, Old English Homilies, 1867, I, 41-47 (E. E. T. S. 34). 

Pages 208, 209. Catharine of Alexandria. MSS. Royal 17. 
A. XXVH, Bodleian NE. A. 3. 11, Cott. Titus D. XVIIL Ed. 
J. Morton, The Legend of St. Katherine, 1841, and E. Einenkel, 
The Life of St. Katherine, 1884 (E. E. T. S. 80). Margaret and 
Juliana. MSS. Royal 17. A. XXVH, Bodleian 34. Margaret, 
ed. O. Cockayne, Seinte Marherete, 1866 (E. E. T. S. 13). Juli- 
ana, ed. O. Cockayne and E. Brock, The Lifelade of St. Juliana, 
1872 (E. E. T. S. 51). For all three poems, see Einenkel, 
Anglia, v, 110-22, H. Stodte, Tiber die Sprache u. Heimat der 
Katharine-gruppe, 1896, O. Backhaus, TJber die Quelle der men. 
Legende von der h. Juliane, 1899. For Middle English versions 
of Margaret, see E. Krahl, Untersuchungen iiber vier Versionen 
der men. Margareten-legende, 1889. 

Pages 210, 211. Meiden Margerete. Aside from the version 
of MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. 14. 39, the poem is found in MS. 
Auchinleck, ed. W. B. D. D. Turnbull, Legendae Catholicae, 
1840, and Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 225-35; and in 
MS. Bodl. 779, ed. Horstmann, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. 
lxxix, 411-19. 

Pages 212, 213. Eustace. MSS. Digby 86 and Ashmole 61. 
Ed. Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 211-19. Assumption 
of Our Lady. A. Original Form. MSS. and editions: (1) Camb. 
Univ. Libr. Gg IV. 27. 2, ed. J. R. Lumby, King Horn, 1866 
(E. E. T. S. 14, re-ed. G. H. McKnight), pp. 44-50; (2) Brit. 
Mus. Addit. 10036, ed. Lumby, pp. 75-100, and R. Morris, 
Cursor Mundi, p. 1638; (3) Harl. 2382, in-edited; (4) Camb. 
Univ. Libr. Dd I. 1, in-edited; (5) Camb. Univ. Libr. Ff II. 38. 
23, in-edited; (6) Chetham Libr. Manchester 8009, in-edited. 
Revision A. In South-English Legendary. Occurs in various 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 365 

MSS. of the Legendary, but is still in-edited. Revision B. In 
expanded North-English Homily Collection. MSS. Harl. 4196 
and Cott. Tib. E. VII. Edited Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., 
pp. 112-18. Revision C. In Cursor Mundi, vv. 20065 ff. See 
references under Chapter VI. Revision D. MS. Auchinleck. 
In tail-rhyme stanzas. Ed. M. Schwarz, Engl. Stud, vm, 427- 
64 (1885). A so-called critical text of the original version is in 
E. Hackauf, Assumptio Mariae, 1902. See also F. Gierth, Engl. 
Stud, vii, 1-33, and P. Leendertz, Engl. Stud, xxxv, 350-58. 

Page 214. The Harrowing of Hell. MSS. Digby 86, Harl. 
2253, Auchinleck. It has been many times edited from one or 
more of the MSS. but not often in trustworthy form. A satis- 
factory text of the three MSS., with bibliography, is in W. H. 
Hulme, The Middle English Harrowing of Hell and Gospel of 
Nicodemus, 1908 (E. E. T. S. C). 

Page 215. Childhood of Jesus. MS. Laud 108. Ed. Horst- 
mann, Altengl. Leg., pp. 1-61. See P. Meyer, Romania xvni, 
128. 

Page 216. Gregory. MSS. and editions: Vernon, ed. Horst- 
mann, Arch.f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lv, 407-38 (1876); Auchinleck, 
ed. Turnbull, Legendae Catholicae, and F. Schulz, Die engl. 
Gregorlegende, 1876; Cott. Cleop. D. IX, ed. Horstmann, Arch, 
f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. Lvn, 59-83; Rawl. poet. 225 (?), in-edited 
(see W. Heuser, Engl. Stud, xxxii, 5). "Critical" ed. by C. 
Keller, Die mittelenglische Gregoriuslegende, 1914. See E. Kol- 
bing, XJber die englische Version der Gregorlegende in Beitrdge 
zur vergleichenden Geschichte der Poesie u. Prosa, 1876, 0. Neus- 
sell, XJber die Bearbeitungen der Sage von Gregorius, 1886, and 
C. Keller, Einleitung zu einer kritischen Ausgabe der men. Gre- 
goriuslegende, 1909. 

Page 217. St. Patrick's Purgatory. MS. Auchinleck, ed. E. 
Kolbing, Engl. Stud, i, 57-112 (1877). For the literature con- 
nected with the Tractatus de Purgatorio, see T. Wright, St. 
Patrick's Purgatory, 1844; Kolbing, as cited; E. Mall, Roman. 



366 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Forschungen, vi, 139-97 (1891); S. Eckleben, Die alteste Schil- 
derung vom Fegefeuer des h. Patricius, 1885; G. P. Krapp, The 
Legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory, 1900. 

Page 218. Adam and Eve. MS. Auchinleck, ed. Horstmann, 
Sammlung altengl. Leg., pp. 139-47. See F. Bachmann, Die 
beiden metrichen Versionen des me. Canticum de Creatione, 1891, 
and W. Meyer, Vita Adae et Evae in Abhandlungen der bay. 
Akad. xiv, 185-250 (1879). 

Page 219. Catharine. MSS. Auchinleck, Cajus Coll. Camb. 
175, ed. Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 242-59. 

Page 220. Mary Magdalene. MS. Auchinleck, ed. Horst- 
mann, Sammlung altengl. Leg., pp. 163-70. For South-English 
Legendary, see references under Chapter VI. Version of North- 
English Homily Collection in MS. Harl. 4196, and ed. as indi- 
cated under Chapter VI. See O. Knork, Untersuchungen uber 
die me. Magdalenenlegende, 1889. 

Page 221. Marina. MS. Harl. 2253, ed. K. Boddeker, Altengl. 
Dichtungen des MS. Harl. 2253, 1878, pp. 254-63, and Horst- 
mann, Sammlung altengl. Leg., pp. 171-73. 

Page 222. Vision of St. Paul. Version (1) MSS. Jesus Coll. 
Oxford 29, ed. R. Morris, An Old English Miscellany, 1872 
(E. E. T. S. 49), pp. 147-55, and Digby 86, ed. Horstmann, 
Arch.f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxii, 403-06 (1879). Version (2) MS. 
Laud 108, ed. Horstmann, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lii, 35-38 
(1874). See H. Brandes, Visio St. Pauli, ein Beitrag zur Visions- 
litteratur, 1885, and Engl. Stud, vn, 34-65 (1884). 

Page 223. Jacob and Joseph. MS. Bodleian 652, ed. W. Heu- 
ser, Das fruhmittelengl. Josephlied, Bonner Beitr. xvn, 83-121 
(1905). 

Page 225. Gospel of Nicodemus. MSS. Cott Galba E. IX, 
Harl. 4196, Addit. 32578, Sion Coll. arc. L. 40. 2 a+2 . Ed. W. H. 
Hulme, as above, under p. 214. 

Page 226. Childhood of Jesus. MSS. and editions: Harl. 
2399, Horstmann, Sammlung altengl. Leg., pp. 111-23; Harl. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 367 

3954, work cited, pp. 101-10; Addit. 31042, Horstmann, Arch, 
f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxxiv, 327-39. See H. Landshoff, Kind- 
heit Jesu, 1889. 

Page 227: St. Alexis. MSS. and editions: Vernon, Horst- 
mann, Arch.f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lvi, 391-401, and F. J. Furni- 
vall, Adam Dame's 5 Dreams, 1878 (E. E. T. S. 69), pp. 17-79; 
Laud 108, Horstmann, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. li, 101-10, 
and Furnivall, place cited; Naples XIII. B. 29, in-edited as a 
whole; Durham Cath. Libr. D. V. H. 14, in-edited as a whole. 
Critical ed. of the first three by J. Schipper, Englische Alexius- 
legenden, 1877. See M. Rosier, Die Fassungen der Alexius- 
legende, 1905 (Wiener Beitr. xxi), and Gerould, Engl. Stud. 
xxxvii, 134-41. 

Page 228. Celestin. MS. Laud 463 (formerly L. 70), ed. 
Horstmann, Anglia, i, 55-85 (1878). Barlaam. MS. Vernon, 
ed. Horstmann, Altengl. Leg., pp. 215-25. Euphrosyne. MS. 
Vernon, ed. Horstmann, Engl. Stud, i, 300-11 (1877), and 
Sammlung altengl. Leg., pp. 174-82. 

Pages 229, 230. Vision of St. Paul. MSS. Vernon and Addit. 
22283, ed. Morris, An Old English Miscellany, pp. 223-32, 
Horstmann and Furnivall, Minor Poems of the Vernon MS., 
1892 (E. E. T. S. 98), pp. 251-260, and Horstmann, Engl. 
Stud, i, 293-99. The Trental of St. Gregory. MSS. and editions: 
Vernon, Horstmann, Engl. Stud, vni, 275-77 (1885), and 
Horstmann and Furnivall, Minor Poems of the Vernon MS., 
pp. 260-68; Cott. Calig. A. II, and Lambeth 306, Furnivall, 
Political, Religious, and Love Poems, 1866 (E. E. T. S. 15), pp. 
83-92, and Horstmann and Furnivall, Minor Poems, pp. 260- 
68, 747-48; Balliol Coll. Oxford 354, in-edited; Garrett, Prince- 
ton Univ., R. K. Root, Engl. Stud, xli, 365-71 (1910). 
"Critical" ed. by A. Kaufmann, Trentalle Sancti Gregorii, 1889 
(Erlanger Beitr. 3). See H. Varnhagen, Anglia, xiii, 105-06. 

Page 231. Margaret. MSS. and editions: Ashmole 61, 
Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 236-41; Brome Hall, Suffolk, 



368 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

L. T. Smith, A Common-place Book of the 15th Century, 1886. 
St. Patrick's Purgatory. MSS. and editions: Cott. Calig. A. II, 
Kolbing, Engl. Stud. I, 113-21; Brome Hall, Suffolk, L. T. 
Smith, Engl. Stud, ix, 3-12, and A Common-place Book. 

Page 232. Catharine. MSS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ff H. 38, and 
Rawl. poet. 34. Former ed. Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 
260-64, latter in-edited. St. Alexis. A. MSS. Laud 463 (for- 
merly L. 70) and Trin. Coll. Oxford 57. Ed. Horstmann, Arch, 
f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lvi, 401-16, and Furnivall, Adam Davie's 
5 Dreams, pp. 17-79. Critical edition by J. Schipper, Die 
zweite Version der men. Alexiuslegenden, 1887 {Wiener Sitzungs- 
berichte, cxiv). B. MS. Laud 622, ed. Furnivall, place cited, 
and Horstmann, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lix, 79-90. 

Page 234. Canticum de Creatione. MS. Trin. Coll. Oxford 
57, ed. Horstmann, Anglia, i, 287-331, and Sammlung altengl. 
Leg., pp. 124-38. See F. Bachmann, Die beiden metrischen Ver- 
sionen des me. Canticum de Creatione, 1891. 

Pages 235, 236. Christopher. MS. Thornton, ed. Horstmann, 
Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 454-66. John the Evangelist. MS. Thorn- 
ton, ed. G. G. Perry, Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse, 1867 
(re-issued 1914), (E. E. T. S. 26), pp. 97-105, and Horstmann, 
work cited, pp. 467-71. 

Page 237. Erkenwald. MS. Harl. 2250, ed. Horstmann, 
work cited, pp. 265-74. 

Page 238. Susanna. MSS. and editions: Vernon, Horst- 
mann, Anglia, I, 93-101, and F. J. Amours, Scottish Alliterative 
Poems, 1897, pp. 172-87 (Scot. Text Soc. 27, 38); Cott. Calig. 
A. II, Horstmann, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxii, 406-11; 
Phillipps 8252, Horstmann and Kolbing, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. 
Spr. lxxiv, 339-44; Addit. 22283, in-edited, variants Arch, 
f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxii, 411-13; Ingleby, in-edited, variants 
by Amours, work cited. Critical ed. H. Koster, Huchown's Pistel 
of Swete Susan, 1895. See O. G. Brade, Uber Huchown's Pistil 
of Swete Susan, 1892. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 369 

Pages 239-44. St. Cecilia. For data necessary to the study of 
Chaucer's works, see E. P. Hammond, Chaucer. A Bibliographi- 
cal Manual, 1908. Special articles concerned with the Second 
Nun's Tale are: E. Kolbing, Engl. Stud, i, 215-29, E. Koeppel, 
Anglia, xiv, 227-33, F. Holthausen, Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. 
lxxxvii, 265-73, and C. Brown, Mod. Phil, ix, 1-16. See also 
R. K. Root, The Poetry of Chaucer, 1906, pp. 277-80. 

Pages 245-47. Christina. MS. Arundel 168, ed. Horst- 
mann, Sammlung altengl. Leg., pp. 183-90. See Gerould, Mod. 
Lang. Notes, xxrx, 129-33. 

Page 248. Vision of Tundale. MSS. Advocates' Libr. 19. 3. 1, 
Cott. Calig. A. II, Royal 17. B. XLIII, Ashmole 1491. Ed. 
A. Wagner, Tundale; das me. Gedicht iiber die Vision des Tun- 
dalus. 1893. Edinburgh MS. had been previously ed. by 
W. B. D. D. Turnbull, The Visions of Tundale, 1843. See A. 
Wagner, Visio Tnugdali, 1882, and Anglia, xx, 452-62; E. 
Peters, Die Vision des Tnugdalus; ein Beitrag zur Kultur- 
geschichte des Mittelalters, 1895. St. Cuthbert. MS. Castle 
Howard, ed. J. T. Fowler, Life of St. Cuthbert, 1891 (Surtees 
Soc. 87). See E. Kolbing, Engl. Stud, xix, 121-25, H. Less- 
mann, Engl. Stud, xxiii, 345-65, xxiv, 176-95. 

Pages 249-51. St. Robert of Knaresborough. MS. owned by 
the Duke of Newcastle (in 1878), ed. H. J. T. Drury, The Metri- 
cal Life of St. Robert of Knaresborough, 1824 (Roxb. Club). 
Another life in MS. Harl. 3775. St. Alexis. MS. Cott. Titus A. 
XXVI, ed. Furnivall, Adam Dame's 5 Dreams, 1878 (E. E. T. S. 
69), pp. 17-79, and Horstmann, Arch.f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lix, 
96-101. 

Page 252. Theophilus. MS. Rawl. poet. 225, ed. W. Heuser, 
Engl. Stud, xxxn, 1-23 (1903). 

Page 253. Robert of Sicily. MSS. Vernon, Trin. Coll. Oxford 
57, Harl. 525, Harl. 1701, Camb. Univ. Libr. Ff II. 38, Jj IV. 9, 
Cajus Coll. Camb. 174. Ed. W. C. Hazlitt, Remains of the Early 
Popular Poetry of England, 1864-1866, I, 270-288 (from two 



370 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

MSS. only), Horstmann, Sammlung altengl. Leg., pp. 209-19 
(a mixed text from first five MSS.), Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. 
lxii, 416-31 (from last three MSS.), R. Nuck, Roberd of Cisyle, 
1887. The Trental of St. Gregory. MSS. Advocates' Libr. 19. 3. 1 
Camb. Univ. Libr. Kk I. 6. Former ed. W. B. D. D. Turnbull, 
The Visions of Tundale, 1843, and K. D. Btilbring, Anglia,xni, 
301-09; the latter by A. Kaufmann, Trentalle Sancti Gregorii, 
1889, pp. 44-49. 

Pages 254-56. John Audelay. See J. E. Wulfing, Der Dichter 
John Audelay in Anglia,xviu, 175-217 (1896). MS. Douce 302. 
Vision of Paul, ed. R. Morris, An Old English Miscellany, 1872 
(E. E. T. S. 49), pp. 210-22. De tribus Regibus Mortuis, ed. W. 
Storck and R. Jordan, Engl. Stud, xliii, 177-88. 

Pages 256-66. Lydgate. Best account of Lydgate's life and 
works in introduction to J. Schick, Lydgate's Temple of Glass, 
1891 (E. E. T. S. LX). Useful but perhaps unnecessarily faulty 
is H. N. MacCracken's The Lydgate Canon, 1908, which may be 
most conveniently consulted in the introduction of his The 
Minor Poems of John Lydgate, 1911 (E. E. T. S. CVII). The 
Life of Our Lady. MSS. Arundel 66, 168, Sloane 1785, 1825, 
Harl. 629, 1304, 2382, 3362, 3952, 4011, 4260, 5272, Cott. App. 
VIII, Addit. 19252, 19432, Ashmole 39, 59, Bodley 75, 120, 
Rawl. poet. 140, Hatton 73, St. John's Coll. Oxford 56, Corp. 
Chr. Coll. Oxford 61, 237, Camb. Univ. Libr. Mm VI. 15, Kk I. 
13, Trim Coll. Camb. R. 3. 21, R. 3. 22, Cajus Coll. Camb. 230, 
Lambeth 344, Advocates' Libr. Edin. Jac. V. 7, Soc. of Anti- 
quaries 134, Cockerell, Cambridge. (The Armes MS. listed by 
MacCracken proved to be a modern copy.) Ed. Caxton 1484, 
Redman 1531, C. E. Tame, Early English Religious Literature, 
1871 (edition destroyed by fire, but copy in Brit. Mus.). Por- 
tions printed in The Bannatyne MS., 1873-79 (Hunterian Soc), 
and Turnbull, The Visions of Tundale, 1843. Announced for the 
E. E. T. S. by G. Fiedler. St. Margaret. MSS. Cosin's Libr. 
Durham V. II. 14, Harl. 367, 1704, 2382, Camb. Univ. Libr. LI 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 371 

V. 18, Triii. Coll. Camb. R. 3, 20, Bodley 686. Ed. from Dur- 
ham MS. by Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 446-53, and 
MacCracken, Minor Poems, pp. 173-92. St. Clotilda. MS. 
Triii. Coll. Camb. R. 3. 20, ed. R. Brotanek, Die engl. Masken- 
spiele, 1902, pp. 317-19. St. Edmund. MSS. Harl. 2278, Ash- 
mole 46, ed. Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 376-440. Also 
found in MSS. Ashmole 59, Harl. 367, 372, 4826, 7333, Camb. 
Univ. Libr. Ee II. 15, Tanner 347, all in-edited. St. Allan. 
MSS. Lansdowne 699, Trim CoU. Oxford 38, Phillipps 8299, 
Lincoln Cath. C. 5. 4, Inner Temple 511, Talbot Hours in the 
Yates Thompson Libr. Edition of 1534, reprinted by Horst- 
mann, St. Albon und Amphabel, 1882. Miracles of St. Edmund. 
MSS. Ashmole 46, Cott. Titus A. VIII, Laud 683, Tanner 347. 
Ed. from first, Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 440-45. St. 
Giles. MSS. Harl. 2255, Laud 683, Lansdowne 699, Leiden Voss. 
9. Ed. from Harl. by Horstmann, work cited, pp. 371-75; from 
Laud by MacCracken, pp. 161-73. St. Austin at Compton. 
MSS. Harl. 2255, 4826, Camb. Univ. Libr. Hh IV. 12, Lincoln 
Cath. C. 5. 4, Lansdowne 699, Leiden Voss. 9. Ed. from Harl. 
2255 by Halliwell, Minor Poems of Lydgate, 1840 (Percy Soc), 
pp. 135-49, and MacCracken, pp. 193-206. Procession of Corpus 
Christi. MSS. Harl. 2251, Trim CoU. Camb. R. 3. 20, Addit. 
29729. Ed. from Harl. by Halliwell, work cited, pp. 95-103; from 
Trim, with variants, by MacCracken, pp. 35-43. St. Petronilla. 
No MS. known. Printed by Pynson without date. Thence, from 
copy in Huth Libr., in Fugitive Tracts, Ser. I, and thence by 
MacCracken, pp. 154-59. See T. Corser, Collectanea Anglo- 
Poetica, 1860-83, v, 148-49 (Chetham Soc). Calendar. MSS. 
Harl. 1706, 4011, Douce 229, 322, Rawl. 408, Lambeth 878, 
Longleat 258. Ed. from Harl. 4011, Douce 322, Rawl. 408 
by Horstmann, Arch.f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxxx, 114-35 (1888); 
from Rawl. 408 by A. Clark, The English Register of Godstow, 
1905-11 (E. E. T. S. 129, 130, 142), pp. 13-24; from all by 
MacCracken, pp. 363-76. 



372 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Pages 266-71. John Capgrave. For life see introductions to 
F. Hingeston-Randolph, The Book of the Illustrious Henries, 
1858 (Rolls Ser. 7), F. J. Furnivall, The Life of St. Katharine of 
Alexandria. By John Capgrave, 1893 (E. E. T. S. 100), and J. J. 
Munro, John Capgrave' s Lives of St. Augustine and St. Gilbert of ' 
Sempringham, 1910 (E. E. T. S. 140). St. Catharine. MSS. 
Arundel 20, 168, 396, and Rawl. poet. 118 (formerly Rawl. 116). 
Ed. as above from last two. St. Norbert. MS. Phillipps (in Cap- 
grave's own hand). Specimens printed by J. J. Munro, work 
cited, pp. xii-xiv. 

Page 271. St Dorothy. MSS. Harl. 5272 and Arundel 168. 
Ed. from former (with variants) by Horstmann, Sammlung 
altengl. Leg., pp. 191-97. See J. M. Peterson, The Dorothea 
Legend, 1910. 

Page 272. St Erasmus. MSS. and editions: Harl. 2382, 
Horstmann, Sammlung altengl. Leg., pp. 198-200; Bedford, 
work cited, pp. 201-03; Camb. Univ. Libr. Dd I. 1, Horstmann, 
Arch.f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxii, 413-16; Rawl. poet. 34, in-edited. 

Pages 272, 273. The Holy Blood of Hales. MS. Royal 17. C. 
XVII, ed. Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 275-81. See F. A. 
Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 2d ed. 1889, 
ii, 536-41. 

Pages 273-75. St. Wulfhad. MS. Cott. NeroC. XII, ed. Horst- 
mann, Altengl. Leg. n.f., pp. 308-14. See Dugdale's Monasti- 
con, 2d ed. vi, 230-31. 

Pages 275, 276. St Editha and St Etheldreda. MS. Cott. 
Faustina B. Ill, ed. G. H. Black, Chronicon Vilodunense, 1830, 
and Horstmann, S. Editha sive Chronicon vilodunense, 1883. See 
W. Heuser, Die men. Legenden von St Editha und St Etheldreda, 
1887; R. Fischer, Anglia, xi, 175-218; and F. Liebermann, Neue 
Arch. d. Gesellschaftf. altere deutsche Geschichtskunde, xvin, 237. 

Pages 277-79. Wade's St. Thomas of Canterbury. MS. Corp. 
Chr. Coll. Camb. 298, ed. Horstmann, Engl. Stud, m, 409-69 
(1880). Bradshaw's Life of St. Werburghe. Ed. from Pynson's 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 373 

print by E. Hawkins, The Holy Lyfe and History of Saynt Wer- 
burge, 1848 (Chetham Soc), and Horstmann, The Life of Saint 
Werburge, 1887 (E. E. T. S. 88). 

Pages 280, 281. Gospel of Nicodemus. MSS. I. Pepys 2498; 
II. Salisbury Cath. 39, Addit. 16165; III. Egerton 2658, Stony- 
hurst CoU. B. XLm, Bodl. 207; IV. Worcester Cath. 172; V. 
Harl. 149;VI.Camb.Univ.Libr.MmL29;VII. Prints: Julian 
Notary, London, 1507, Wynkyn de Worde, 1509, etc. See W. H. 
Hulme, The Middle-English Harrowing of Hell and Gospel of 
Nicodemus, 1908 (E. E. T. S. C), pp. xxxii-lx. 

Page 282. Life of Adam and Eve. MS. Vernon, ed. Horst- 
mann, Sammlung altengl. Leg., pp. 220-27. The Three Kings of 
Cologne. MSS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ee IV. 32, Cott. Titus A. 
XXV, Royal 18. A. X, Harl. 1704, Rawl. B. 149. Ed. from first 
three, Horstmann, The Three Kings of Cologne, 1886 (E. E. T. 
S. 85). 

Page 283. St. Anthony of Egypt. MS. Royal 17. C. XVII, ed. 
Horstmann, Anglia, iv, 109-38 (1881). See F. Holthausen, 
Arch. f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxxxvii, 60-64. 

Page 284. Staunton's St. Patrick's Purgatory. MSS. Royal 
17. B. XLIH, Addit. 34193. Ed. from former by G. P. Krapp, 
The Legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory, 1900, pp. 54-77. Visions 
of St. Bridget. MSS. Lambeth 432 and Garrett Collection, 
Princeton University. In-edited. Vision of a Monk of Eynsham. 
Printed by Macklinia c. 1482. Edited therefrom by Arber. 

Pages 284, 285. Capgrave's prose lives. MSS. Addit. 36704, 
Cott. Vitel. D. XV (latter a fragment). Ed. J. J. Munro, John 
Capgrave's Lives of St. Augustine and St. Gilbert of Sempringham, 
1910 (E. E. T. S. 140). 

Page 286. Mary Magdalene. MS. Durham 5. 2. 14, ed. J. 
Zupitza, Arch.f.d. Stud. d. n. Spr. xci, 207-24 (1893). St. 
Dorothea. I. MS. Lamb. 432, ed. Horstmann, Anglia, in, 
325-28 (1880); n. MSS. Addit. 11565 and 35298, Lambeth 72, 
all in-edited. HI. MS. Royal 2. A. XVIII, in-edited. See P. 



374 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Butler, Legenda Aurea, 1899, and J. M. Peterson, The Dorothea 
Legend, 1910. 

Pages 287, 288. St. Jerome. MS. Lamb. 432, ed. Horstmann, 
Anglia, in, 328-60. Fragments of Gascoigne's Life in MS. 
Magdalen Coll. Oxford 93. The Lyfe of St. Bridget. Printed by 
Pynson, 1516, ed. J. H. Blunt, The Mirroure of oure Ladye, 
1873 (E. E. T. S. XIX), pp. xlvii-lix. Life of St. Catharine. 
MS. Digby 172, in-edited. 

Pages 289, 290. St. Elizabeth of Spalbeck, etc. MS. Douce 114, 
ed. Horstmann, Anglia, viii, 102-96 (1885). Source of St. Eliza- 
beth in Catalogus Codicum Hagiographicorum Bibliothecae Regiae 
Bruxellensis, n, 362-78 (1889), as see Gerould, Anglia, n.f. 
xxvii, 356-58. 

Pages 290, 291. Caxton's St. Wenefred, re-edited Horstmann, 
Anglia in, 295-313. His St. Catharine of Siena, re-edited Horst- 
mann, Arch.f. d. Stud. d. n. Spr. lxxvi, 33-112, 265-314, 353- 
400. Wynkyn de Worde's St. Ursula, reprinted in The Legend of 
St. Ursula and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne, 1869 (no editor 
named); The Lyfe of St. Brandan in T. Wright, St. Brandan, 
1844 (Percy Soc. 14). As to latter, see G. Schirmer, Zur Bren- 
danus-Legende, 1888. The Martiloge, ed. F. Procter and E. S. 
Dewick, 1893 (Henry Bradshaw Soc. HI). 

CHAPTER Vin 

saints' lives in drama 

Page 295. As to Geoffrey's St. Catharine, see Matthew Paris, 
Gesta Abbatum S. Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 1867, i, 73 (Rolls Ser. 
28). For William Fitzstephen's reference see J. C. Robertson, 
Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, 1875-85, in, 9 
(Rolls Ser. 67). 

Pages 297-99. The best list of early dramatic presentations 
yet prepared may be found in E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval 
Stage, 1903, n, 329-406, which includes the material found in 
earlier lists. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 375 

Pages 301-09. York Plays, ed. L. T. Smith, 1885; Chester 
Plays, ed. T. Wright, 1843-47 (Shakespeare Soc), and H. Deim- 
ling, 1892 (E. E. T. S. LXII, Pt. I only) ; Towneley Plays, ed. 
(anonymously for Surtees Soc.), 1836, by G. England and A. W. 
Pollard, 1897 (E. E. T. S. LXXI); Ludus Coventriae, ed. J. O 
Halliwell, 1841 (Shakespeare Soc.). As to subject-matter and 
sources, see O. Hettrich, Studien zu der York Plays, 1886; P. 
Kamann, Anglia,?L, 189-226; H. Ungemach, Die Quellen derfilnf 
ersten Chester Plays, 1890 {Miinchener Beit. I); E. Falke, Die 
Quellen des sogenannten Ludus Coventriae, 1908; M. H. Dodds, 
Mod. Lang. Review, ix, 79-91 (1914) ; E. L. Swenson, An Inquiry 
into the Composition and Structure of Ludus Coventriae (with a 
Note on the Home of L. C. by H. Craig), 1914 (Univ. of Minnesota 
Stud. I). For the Cornish Plays see E. Norris, The Ancient 
Cornish Drama, 1859. The Croxton Play is accessible in J. M. 
Manly, Specimens of Pre-Shakespearean Drama, i, 239-76 
(1897), and O. Waterhouse, The Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, 1909 
(E. E. T. S. CIV;. The Conversion of St. Paul and Mary Mag- 
dalene can be read in F. J. Furaivall, The Digby Plays, 1896 
(E. E. T. S. LXX) the former also in Manly, work cited. The 
Life and Repentaunce of Mary Magdalene, ed. F. I. Carpenter, 
1902. As to the connection of Massinger's The Virgin Martyr 
with legend, see J. M. Peterson, The Dorothea Legend, and Ger- 
ould, Engl. Stud, xliv, 257-60. 

CHAPTER IX 

THE REFORMATION AND SINCE 

F. A. Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 1889, 
gives much valuable information as to the state of affairs that 
caused the overthrow of the type. T. Corser, Collectanea Anglo- 
Poetica, 1860-83 (Chetham Soc), and J. Gillow, A Literary and 
Biographical History, or Biographical Dictionary of the English 
Catholics, 1885-95, are useful sources and guides with regard to 



376 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Catholic writers and their works. The articles in the Diet . Nat. 
Biography are, for the most part, untrustworthy in detail. For- 
rest's Theophilus has been reprinted by F. Ludorff, Anglia, vn, 
60-115 (1884), but see W. S. Logeman, Anglia, x, 533-41. The 
Lives of Women Saints, etc., are in MS. Stowe 949, ed. Horst- 
mann, 1886 (E. E. T. S. 86). For the author see Horstmann, 
Nova Legenda Anglie, i, x. Roscarrock's Lives of the English 
Saints are in MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Addit. 3041. Identified in 
1892 by F. J. H. Jenkinson and C. Horstmann, and again in 
1897 by Mgr. E. Nolan. Life of St. Christina printed by Horst- 
mann, Nova Legenda, n, 532-37. Thomas Robinson's The Life 
and Death of Mary Magdalene is found in MSS. Harl. 6211 and 
Rawl. 41. Ed. H. O. Sommer, 1887, and 1899 (latter ed. for E. 
E. T. S. LXXVIII). 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abbots, Lives of the, by Bede, 100, 

106. 
Abdias, 123. 
Abercius, St., 52. 
Abgar, 48. 

Acta Sanctorum, 71, 75, 124. 
Acta Sincera, 28. 
Actes and Monuments, 316. 
Adam, biographer of St. Hugh, 

144, 145. 
Ados et Evaz, Vita, 218, 282. 
Adam and Eve, Auch. MS., 216, 

218-219; Canticum de Creatione, 

234-235; Vernon MS., 282; in 

Cornish plays, 302. 
Adamnan, 95-97. 
Adela, Queen, 136. 
Adelard, 109. 
Adgar, 136. 
MMe, 103-104, 146. 
iElfred, 22, 59, 92, 106, 110, 111, 

117. 
JElfred, Life of, by Asser, 127. 
iElfric, 1, 19 n., 90, 107, 108, 112, 

115-122, 123, 124, 125, 137, 139, 

151, 167, 337. 
yEthelmaer, 117. 
^thelweard, 118. 
^thelwold, St., 37, 107, 114, 116, 

118; Vita by ^Elfric, 118, 121. 

See Athelwold. 
Afra, St., 45. 

Agatha, St.: by Bokenam, 191. 
Agnes, St., 309. 
Agnes, St.: by Bokenam, 188-189, 

191; by Lady E. Falkland, 324. 
Aidan, St., 57, 59. 
Ailred, St., 141. 
Alban, St., 22, 35, 44, 55-56, 101, 

114. See Auban. 



Alban, St.: by ^lfric, 120; by 

Lydgate, 263-264; The Tragedy 

of St. Albans, by Shirley, 310. 
Alcuin, 92, 97, 105-106. 
Aldhelmi, Vita, by William of 

Malmesbury, 142. 
Alexander III, 133. 
Alexias, 328. 

Alexis, St., 36, 49, 227, 328. 
Alexis, St.: Vie de, 130; Northern, 

226-228; in No. Eng. Horn. Coll., 

227; Southern, 232; in Scot. Leg. 

Coll., 232; late 14th cent., 232; 

15th cent., 251-252. 
Alford, F., 329. 
Alfred of Beverley, 278. 
Alkmund, St., 185. 
All Saints Day , in So. Eng. Leg., 156. 
All Souls' Day, in So. Eng. Leg., 

156-157. 
Allen, Cardinal, 320. 
Alphabet of Tales, An, 201. 
Alphabetum Narrationum, 201, 227. 
Alphege, St., in So. Eng. Leg., 160. 
Ambrose, St., 195. 
Amis and Amiloun, 51. 
Amphibalus, 35, 264. 
Analogy in mediaeval sermons, 

139, 165. 
Anastasius, St., 102. 
Ancren Riwle, 208. 
Andreas, 76, 77, 85-89. 
Andrew, St., 33, 85-89. 
Andrew, in Blickling Horn., 113. 
Andrew and Matthew, Acts of, 85, 

87. 
Anger of St. Frideswide's, 136. 
Anglia Sacra, 331. 
Anglo-Norman legends, 131-139, 

205. 



INDEX 



Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 93. 
Anna, St., by Bokenam, 191. 
Anne,St., Daughters of (lost), 191. 
Anonymity in mediaeval literature, 

234. 
Anselm, St., lives by Eadmer, 141; 

Vita by John of Salisbury, 142. 
Anthony, St., of Egypt, 283-287. 
Antichrist, Anglo-Norman poem, 

137. 
Antioch, certain virgin in, 195. 
Antiquitates Apostolicce, 331. 
Aphrodite, 45, 46. 
Apollinaria, St., 45. 
Apostles, Fates of the, 64, 76-78. 
Apostles, Legends of: 32, 33-34; 

by ^Elfric, 119, 123; in Scot. Leg. 

■ Coll., 178; in Cursor Mundi, 200. 
Apostolici, 331. 
Apostolorum, Sortes, 33, 77. 
Aries, Council of, 56. 
Arnold of Liege, 201, 227. 
Arrek, 269-270. 
Arthur, 21, 22, 40. 
Arundel, Countess of, 136. 
Asser, 127. 
Athanasius, St., 25. 
Athelwold, St., in So. Eng. Leg., 160. 
Auban, Vie de seint, 135, 136. 
Audelay, John, 254-256. 
Audrey, St., 276, 278. See Ethel- 

dred. 
Audrey, St., Anglo-Norman life, 

135. 
Augustine, St., of Canterbury, 57, 

86, 94, 110. 
Augustine, St., of Canterbury: Vita 

by Goscelin, 141; St. Austin at 

Compton, 264-265. 
Augustine, St., of Hippo, 38, 189, 

195, 255, 287. 
Augustine, St., of Hippo, 284-285. 
Austin, St., see Augustine, St. 
Authentic passions, 27-28. 

B, author of Vita S. Dunstani, 108- 
109. 



Bacon, Robert, 144. 
Bale, John, 300, 308, 314. 
Ballads, 211, 216, 223. 
Barbara, St., 36, 37, 44, 192. 
Barbour, John, 178. 
Baring-Gould, S., 344-345. 
Barlaam and Josaphat, 46-47. 
Barlaam and Josaphat: mid- 14th 

cent., 229. 
Barnabas, St., in Scot. Leg. Coll., 

180. 
Baronius' Annates, 323. 
Bartholomew, St., 33. 
Bartholomew of Glanville, 280. 
Basil, St., by ^Elfric, 119. 
Battle of Brunanburh, 93. 
Beatrice, St., 201. 
Beauchamp, Thomas de, 244-245, 

246. 
Bede, 6, 24, 50, 51, 55, 58, 60, 61, 

78, 80, 97, 98-103, 104, 105, 106, 

110, 111, 114, 116, 119, 131, 142, 

156, 201, 278. 
Beleth, John, 186. 
Benedict, St., by iElfric, 119; Life 

and Miracles of, by Fursden, 

329. 
Benedict Biscop, 57, 98, 100. 
Benedictine revival, 111-112, 114, 

116, 128. 
Beowulf, 21, 42, 58-59, 60, 70, 84, 

85, 86, 87, 88 n., 115, 125. 
Berkeley, Lord, 281. 
Bernard, St., 147, 186, 195. 
Bertrand of Pontigny, 19, 144. 
Beves of Hampton, 319. 
Biography and legend, 3, 4, 7, 24- 

25. 
Birinus, St., 57. 

Birth of Mary and Christ, The, 216. 
Bitter Withy, The, 216. 
Blasius, St., 37. 

Blasius, St., in Scot. Leg. Coll., 181. 
Blickling Homilies, 2, 85, 112-114. 
Blood of Hales, The Holy, 272-273. 
Bokenam, Osbern, 188-194, 202, 

266, 272, 287, 305. 



INDEX 



381 



Bollandists, 3, 124, 341, 345. 

Book of Martyrs, 316. 

Bouhours, Domixrick, 330. 

Bowsere, Lady, Comtesse d'Eu, 
192. 

Bozon, Nicole, 136. 

Bradshaw, Henry, 277-279. 

Brampton, Gaudy, 330. 

Bran, Blessed, 55. 

Brandan, St., see Brendan, St. 

Bregwin, St., Vita by Eadmer, 141. 

Brendan, St.: Vie de, by Benoist, 
135, 136; in So. Eng. Leg., 158; 
from Golden Legend, 291. 

Bridget, St., 38, 298-299. 

Bridget, St. (of Sweden): Saluta- 
tion to, 255-256; Visions of, 284; 
Life of, 288. 

Britannia Saiicta, 336, 337. 

Brown, C. F., 64, 71, 240. 

Bruce, by Barbour, 178. 

Bruce, J. D., 134, 217. 

Buckland, Robert (or Ralph), 322. 

Buddha, 47. 

Bunyan, 68. 

Burgh, Thomas, 191, 193. 

Burton, E. H., 332. 

Burton, John, 195. 

Bury, J. B., 2, 346. 

Butler, Alban, 1,333, 337-340, 344. 

Byron, Lord, 347. 

Ccecilioe, Acta S., 241. 
Caedmon, 59, 61. 
Caesarius of Aries, 13. 
Calendar, by Lydgate, 258, 266. 

See Menology. 
Calendars, 13, 35, 258, 266. See 

Martyrologies, and Menologies. 
Canterbury Tales, The, 239-244, 

315. 
Canticum de Creatione, see Adam 

and Eve. 
Capgrave, John, 188, 198, 266- 

271, 277, 284-286, 287, 288. 
Carpenter, F. I., 307. 
Castissima, St., 36. 



Castor and Pollux, 44. 
Catalogus Sanctorum, 292. 
Catharine, St., of Alexandria, 6, 

25, 27, 34, 37, 40-41, 208, 209, 

219, 232, 270, 298, 311. 
Catharine of Alexandria, St.: by 

Bokenam, 191; early 13th cent., 

208-210; Auch. MS., 216, 219- 

220; later 14th cent., 232; by 

Capgrave, 269-271; 15th cent. 

prose, 282 n.; St. Albans play, 

295. 
Catharine, St., of Siena, 15. 
Catharine, St., of Siena: from Beau- 
vale, 290; Caxton's, 290-291. 
Catharine, St. (of Sweden), Life of, 

288. 
Catherine d' Alexandrie, by Cle- 

mence, 136. 
Catholic emancipation, 340. 
Catholic Homilies, by iElfric, 118- 

119. 
Cave, William, 331. 
Caxton, William, 187, 196, 197, 

260, 286, 290-291. 
Cecilia, St., 34, 192, 243. 
Cecilia, St.: by Robert de Gretham, 

139; by Bokenam, 191; by 

Chaucer, 240-244, 245-246. 
Celestin, St., 228. 
Celestin, 228-229, 252. 
Ceolfrid, 57, 98, 99, 100. 
Chad, St., 38, 275. 
Chad, St.: (10th cent, prose), 111; 

by Bokenam, 190. 
Challoner, Richard, 321, 330, 335- 

337, 343. 
Challoner, The Life and Times of 

Bishop, 332. 
Chambers, E. K., 305. 
Charlemagne, 273. 
Charles I, 326. 
Chaucer, 1, 178, 189, 192, 226, 233, 

239-244, 245-246, 255, 257, 259, 

271, 280. 
Chester Plays, 301-302. 
Chettle, Henry, 308. 



382 



INDEX 



Christ, Apocryphal legends of, 32, 

38, 135, 200, 215-216, 226. See 

Jesus. 
Christ, by Cynewulf, 64, 65. 
Christ, Life of: with So. Eng. Leg., 

163; by author of Scot. Leg. Coll., 

177, 179; by Crathorne, 335. 
Christ and Satan, 91. 
Christian Year, 347. 
Christina, St.: by Bokenam, 191, 

245; in No. Eng. Horn. Coll., 245; 

in Scot. Leg. Coll., 245; by Wm. 

Paris, 244-247. 
Christina Mirabilis, 2, 19. 
Christina Mirabilis, 289-290. 
Christopher, St., 6, 37, 38, 50, 235- 

236. 
Christopher, St.: O. E. prose, 125; 

verse, 1375-1400, 235-236. 
Christ's Victorie and Triumph, 326. 
Chronicle of England, 267. 
Chronicle of Scotland, 239. 
Church, R. W., 342. 
Cicero, 11. 
Cistercians, 147. 
Clara, St., 38. 
Classes of saints, 17. 
Clemence of Barking, 136. 
Clement, St., of Ancyra, 37. 
Clement, St.: by ^lfric, 119; in So. 

Eng. Leg., 158. 
Clifford, Henry, Earl of Cumber- 
land, 325. 
Clotilda, St., 262, 299. 
Clugnet, L., 45. 
Cockayne, O., 210. 
Coffin, R. A., 342. 
Collectanea Anglo-Poetica, 330. 
Collections of legends in French, 

137-139, 151. 
Columba, St., 57, 95-97, 110. 
Columbce, Vita S., 95-97. 
Columban, St., 37, 43. 
Commody of the moste vertuous and 

godlye Susanna, 308. 
Conquest, effect of, 132, 205-206. 
Conquest of Granada, 311. 



Const antine, 56, 70, 71, 72, 73. 

Contes devots, 136, 139, 185. 

Convention in legends, 28-29, 36-38. 

Corneille, 311. 

Cornish plays, 302. 

Corpus Christi, 173. 

Corpus Christi, Procession of, 265- 

266. 
Corser, T., 330. 
Corset, 138. 

Cosmo and Damian, Sts., 35, 44. 
Craigie, W. A., 225. 
Crashaw, Richard, 327-328. 
Crathorne, William, 334-335. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 21. 
Cromwell, Thomas, 313, 315. 
Cross, Discovery of the Sacred, O. E. 

prose, 124. 
Cross legends, 44, 70-76, 123-124, 

199-200, 219, 235, 282, 302. 
Cross-Wood, Legend of the, 199-200. 
Croxton Play of the Sacrament, 304- 

305. 
Crucifixion, 303. 
Cuminia, 35. 
Cummian, 96. 

Cursor Mundi, 199-200, 213, 219. 
Cuthbert, St., 6, 24. 
Cuthbert, St.: by ^Elfric, 119; early 

15th cent., 248-249. 
Cuthberti, Vita S., by monk of 

Lindisfarne, 100; by Bede, 80, 

99-100. 
Cynegils of Wessex, 57. 
Cynewulf, 2, 62-79, 81, 84-85, 86, 

88, 89, 90, 92, 124, 209, 233. 
Cyprian, St., 27. 
Cyril, St., 287. 

Dalgairns, J. B., 342. 
Danae, 44. 
Daniel, 90. 

Dante, 206, 218, 240, 244. 
Dawson, Edward, 324. 
Dawson, Thomas, 332-333. 
De Antiquitate . . . Urbis Chestrice, 
277. 



INDEX 



De Consuetudine Monachorum, by 
^Sthelwold, 118. 

De Gestis Pontificum, 142. 

De Gestis Regum Anglorum, 141- 
142. 

De Infantia Salvatoris, 215-216. 

De Laudibus Virginum, by Eald- 
helm, 97-98. 

De Ligno Sanctce Cruris, 219. 

De Natura Rerum, by Isidore, 156; 
by Bede, 156. 

De Proprietatibus Rerum, 280. 

De Sanctis Anglioe, 198. 

De tribus Regibus Mortuis, 254. 

De Vita et Morte Sanctorum, 200. 

Dedication of Legends, 136, 191- 
192, 262. 

Definition of the legend, 5. 

Dekker, Thomas, 309. 

Delehaye, Hippolyte, 3, 6, 42. 

Denis, St., see Dionysius. 

Descensus Christi ad Infernos, 91, 
214. 

De Vere, A. T., 347. 

Dialogue betwix a Seculer and 
Frere, 190. 

Dialogues of Gregory, 201. 

Dionysius, St., 37. 

Dionysius, St., by iElfric, 119. 

Dioscuri, 44. 

Diversity of legends, 1—3. 

Dobschutz, E. von, 282. 

Dominic, St., 53, 149. 

Dorothy (or Dorothea), St.: by 
Bokenam, 191; school of Cap- 
grave, 271-272; prose transla- 
tions, 286-287; The Virgin Mar- 
tyr, 309. 

Douay, influence of, 320. 

Doublets, 35, 36. 

Drama, legends approximating, 
214, 228-229, 252-253. 

Dream of the Rood, 90-91. 

Dreams, 37. 

Drihthelm, Vision of, 119. 

Dryden, John, 311. 

Duchesne, L., 52. 



Dugdale, 274. 

Dunstan, St., 38, 114, 128, 146, 
160. 

Dunstan, St.: Vita by B, 108-109; 
Vita by Adelard, 109; Vita by 
Osbern, 126; Vita by Eadmer, 
141; in So. Eng. Leg., 160; Me- 
morials of, by Stubbs, 346. 

Eadmer, 141. 

Ealdhelm, St., 50, 58, 59, 97-98, 
131, 142. 

Early English Text Society, 346. 

Ecclesiastical History, by Bede, 60, 
98-99, 101-103; ^Elfredian trans- 
lation, 110. 

Ecclesiastical History, by Eusebius, 
32, 54. 

Edgar, King, 160. 

Editha (or Edith), St.: Vita by 
Goscelin, 141; 15th cent., 275- 
276. 

Edmund, St., King: by ^Elfric, 120; 
Anglo-Norman lives, 135; by 
Lydgate, 262-263; Miracles of, 
by Lydgate, 264. 

Edmund, St., of Canterbury, 19, 
29, 148. 

Edmund, St., of Canterbury: Anglo- 
Norman life, 135, 136 ; Latin lives, 
143, 144; in So. Eng. Leg., 158. 

Edmund of Cornwall, 273. 

Edward IV, 268. 

Edward, St., 239. 

Edward, St., the Confessor: O. E. 
verse, 93; Anglo-Norman lives, 
135, 136; Vita by Eadmer, 141; 
Vita by Ailred, 141. 

Edward, St., Martyr: in So. Eng. 
Leg., 161; by Bokenam, 190. 

Edwin, St., King, 57, 104. 

Egyptian anchorites, 5. 

Einenkel, E., 208. 

Eleanor, Queen, 136. 

Elene, 2, 64, 65, 69, 70-76, 81, 85, 
86, 88, 124. 

Eleutherius, Pope, 35, 55. 



384 



INDEX 



Eleutherius, St., 51. 

Eleven Thousand Virgins, 41. 

Elizabeth, St., by Bokenam, 191, 

192. 
Elizabeth . . . of Hungary, History 

of St., 329. 
Elizabeth, St., of Portugal, 324. 
Elizabeth, St., of Spalbeck, 289. 
Elizabethan age, 316, 319. 
English Martyrologie, by John 

Watson, 321-322. 
Eosterwine, 100. 
Epic legend, characteristics of the, 

58-62. 
Epic poetry in Anglia, 58-61. 
Epimenides, 44. 
Erasmus, St., 272. 
Erkenwald, St., 237-238, 248. 
Errors in saints' names, 35. 
Espurgatoire saint Patriz, 218. 
Essay on Man, 69. 
Etheldred, St., 57. See Audrey. 
Etheldred, St., by jElfric, 120. 
Etheldreda, St.: 15th cent., 275-276; 

1595, 318. 
Etienne de Besancon, 201. 
Etymologies of saints' names, 39, 

196. 
Eudocia, St., 45. 
Eugenia, St., 45. 

Eugenia, St., in Soot. Leg. Coll., 183. 
Eulalia, St., 130. 
Euphrosyne, St., 36, 45. 
Euphrosyne, St., 229. 
Eusebius, 32, 34, 54. 
Eustace, St., 36, 49, 134. 
Eustace, St.: mid-13th cent., 212; 

Braintree play, 300 ; Sir Placidas, 

by Chettle, 308; by Partridge, 

308, 316-317. 
Evagrius, 283. 

Evangelization of England, 55-57. 
Eve of St. Agnes, 69. 
Evidence, disregard of laws of, 20- 

21. 
Exempla, 14, 139, 172, 185, 200, 

201, 221, 227, 239, 304. 



Exodus, 61, 90. 
Expeditus, St., 38. 
Eynsham, Vision of a Monk of, 145; 
15th cent, trans., 284. 

Faber, F. W., 342. 

Fabian, St., in So. Eng. Leg., 155. 

Faerie Queene, 319. 

Faith, St., 192. 

Faith, St.: by Bokenam, 191. See 

Foi. 
Falkland, Lady Elizabeth, 324. 
Falkner, John, 329, 332. 
Faustus, 228, 252-253. 
Felix, St., of Nola, 102. 
Felix, St., of Valois, 36. 
Felix, St., of East Anglia, by Boke- 
nam, 190. 
Felix (author of Vita S. Guthlaci), 

79, 80, 84, 105, 112. 
Fell, Charles, 333-334. 
Festial, by John Mirk, 184-188, 

247, 280, 290. 
Fiedler, G., 259. 
Fletcher, Giles and Phineas, 326- 

327. 
Florus of Lyons, 102. 
Flos Sanctorum, 324. 
Foerster, M., 113, 120. 
Foi, Vie de ste., by Simon, 136. 
Formulae in legends, 36-38. 
Forrest, William, 317, 318. 
Forstmann, H., 80 n. 
Foxe, John, 316. 
Francis, St., of Assisi, 23 n., 51-52, 

53, 149, 250-251. 
Francis, St., of Assisi, 158. 
Francis of Sales, Life of St., 334- 

335. 
Fremund, St., 263. 
French influences, 129, 131-132, 

137, 138, 139, 167-168, 171, 179, 

200, 205, 206-207, 212, 215, 217, 

220, 222, 229, 232. 
French legends in England, 9-10, 
- 131-139, 205. 
Froude, J. A., 342. 



INDEX 



Fruga Sceculi, 329. 

Fursden, John Cuthbert, 329. 

Furseus, Vision of: byiElfric, 119; 

by Robert de Gretham, 139 ; from 

Bede, 201. 

Galahad, 38. 

Garter, Thomas, 308. 

Gascoigne, Thomas, 288. 

Gasquet, F. A., 315. 

Gawayne and the Green Knight, Sir, 
237. 

Gelasius, 33. 

Genesis, 90, 91. 

Genesis B, 91. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 35. 

Geoffrey of St. Albans, 295. 

George, St., 6, 37, 44, 298, 310, 319. 

George, St.: by Lydgate, 260-261; 
St. George for England, 309-310; 
by Heylyn, 324-325; The Fa- 
mous History of, 330; Memories 
of, by Dawson, 332-333. 

German, St., 56, 110. 

Gesta Romanorum, 186. 

Gibbon, Edward, 338. 

Gilbert, St., of Sempringham, 144. 

Gilbert, St., of Sempringham: Vita, 
144; by Capgrave, 284-286. 

Gildas, 55. 

Giles, St.: O. E. prose, 126; by Lyd- 
gate, 264-265. 

Giraldus Cambrensis, 142-144, 
278. 

Glory of the Martyrs, 54. 

Goethe, 253. 

Golden Legend, see Legenda Aurea. 

Goscelin, 38, 140-141. 

Gower, John, 189. 

Graesse, Th., 287. 

Grafting of legends, 36. 

Grandison, John, 277. 

Greenung, Catherine Francis, 324. 

Gregoire le Grand, by Anger, 136. 

Gregory, Pope, 134, 216-217, 228, 
230. 

Gregory, St., the Great: 5, 44, 92; 



Vita by monk of Whitby, 104- 

105, 110, 230; Life by ^Elfric, 

119, 186, 201, 217, 228. 
Gregory, The Trental of St.: 14th 

cent., 230-231; 15th cent., 253- 

254. 
Gregory of Nyssa, 52. 
Gregory, St., of Tours, 13, 43, 54, 

122; 131. 
Griffith, Michael, 329. 
Grim, Edward, 8. 
Griseldis, A History of, 317. 
Giinter, H., 12, 23. 
Guide to the Antiquities of Rome, 

268. 
Guthlac, St., 79-85, 89, 256. 
Guthlac the Hermit, 79-82. 
Guthlaci, Vita, S.: by Felix, 79, 80, 

105; translations in 10th cent., 

112. 
Guthlac's Death, 79, 82-85, 86. 

Hadrian, of Canterbury, 97. 

Hammond, E. P., 260. 

Handlyng Synne, 171, 200-201. 

Harnack, 28. 

Harrowing of Hell: Junian MS., 91, 
92; Exeter Book, 91-92; mid- 
13th cent., 214-215, 228, 252; 
ibid, Auch, MS., 216. 

Hartland, E. S., 44. 

Havelok the Dane, 220. 

Hawkins, Henry, 329. 

Head-bearing martyrs, 37, 51. 

Hegge Plays, 301, 302. 

Heigham, John, 323. 

Helena, St., 70-76, 124, 199. 

Henry II, 143-144. 

Henry IV, 228. 

Henry V, 255. 

Henry VI, 255, 262, 268. 

Henry VIII, 313, 314, 315. 

Henry of Huntington, 278. 

Henry of Saltrey, 135, 145, 218. 

Henslowe, Philip, 308. 

Herbert of Bosham, 277. 

Hero-worship, 41-42. 



INDEX 



Heuser, W., 276. 

Heylyn, Peter, 324-325, 333. 

Hickes's Thesaurus, 210 n. 

Higden, 190, 278, 280. 

Hilde, St., 57, 60, 105. 

Himmel und Helle, 209. 

Hippolytus, St.. 38-39. 

Histoire litteraire de la France, 133. 

Historia Aurea, 197. 

Historia Trium Begum, 282-283. 

Historical accuracy of legends, 5-7, 

11-13, 18-22, 27-28. 
Historie of . . . St. George of Cap- 

padocia, 324-325. 
History of the Holy Rood-Tree, 123- 

124, 219. 
Holthausen, F., 71, 241, 283. 
Honorius, Emperor, 56. 
Honorius, Pope, 57. 
Horstmann, C, 152, 161, 169, 173, 

180, 182, 210 n., 220 n., 273, 276, 

291, 322. 
Hubert, St., 36. 
Huchown, 239. 
Hugh of Eglinton, 239. 
Hugh, St., of Lincoln, 142-144. 
Hugh, St., of Lincoln: Vita by 

Giraldus, 142-144; Magna Vita 

by Adam, 144, 145. 
Hugh, writer of Vision of St. Paul, 

222. 
Hull, Francis, 329. 
Hulme, W. H., 280, 281, 282. 
Hwaetbert, 100. 
Hypatia, 34. 

Iamblichus, 30. 

Iconography, its influence, 51-52. 
Ignatius, The Life of St., 330. 
Inscriptions, errors from, 52. 
Instructions for Parish Priests, by 

John Mirk, 184. 
International character of legends, 

7-9, 146, 206-207. 
Irene, St., 36. 
Isidore of Seville, 156, 200. 
Ives, St., Vita by Goscelin, 141. 



Jacob and Joseph, 223. 

Jacobus de Voragine, 39, 53-54, 

181, 186. 
Jacques de Vitry, 19, 290. 
James, Proto-Gospel of St., 302. 
James II, 330. 
James, St., the Greater, 38. 
Jameson, Anna M., 345. 
Jamnes and Mambres, 123. 
Jean de Vignay, 195, 241. 
Jerome, St., 125, 189, 192, 283. 
Jerome, St., 287-288. 
Jerusalem chamber, 228. 
Jesuits, 328, 329. 
Jesus, Childhood of: Southern, 215- 

216; Northern, 216, 225, 226. 
Jesus Christ, Enfances, 215. 
Jew who abused the Host, 304. 
John, King, 251, 273. 
John, St., Almoner, 201. 
John, St., Chrysostom, 201. 
John of Damascus, 47. 
John, St., of Gualberto, 36. 
John of Hildesheim, 282-283. 
John of Salisbury, 8, 142, 143. 
John of Trevisa, 280, 281, 282. 
John of Tynemouth, 197, 268, 322. 
John the Baptist, 91, 172. 
John the Baptist, Birth of, in 

Blickling Horn., 113. 
John, St., the Evangelist, in So. Eng. 

Leg., 158; in No. Eng. Horn. Coll., 

174; Thornton MS., 236-237. 
Johnson, Richard, 310, 318-319, 

330. 
Joseph (O. T.), see Jacob and 



Joseph of Arimathea, 52-53, 55, 

272, 281. 
Judith, 91. 
Julian, St., 38, 44. 

Julian, St., in Scot. Leg. Coll., 177. 
Juliana, St., 65-70, 208, 209, 309. 
Juliana: by Cynewulf, 65-70, 71, 

81, 86; early 13th cent., 208-210. 
Julianas, Acta S., 65. 
Juliane, Vie de sainte, 68. 



INDEX 



387 



Julitta and Cyricus, 31. 
Justine, St., 201. 

Kalendre of the newe Legende of 

Englande, 197-198. 
Katharine of Aragon, 317. 
Keble, John, 347. 
Kenelm, Life of St., in So. Eng. Leg., 

156, 160, 161. 
Kentish royal saints, legends of, 

114. 
Keynes, George, 324. 
Kinard, J. P., 122. 
Kinsman, W. and E., 323. 
Kirke, John, 310. 
Kittredge, G. L., 240. 
Knork, O., 220 n. 
Kolbing, E., 241. 
Krahl, E., 210. 
Krapp, G. P., 78, 284. 
Kuhn, E., 47. 
Kunegunde, St., 38. 

Lamb, Charles, 309. 

Lantfred, 19, 107-108. 

Latin legends in England, 9-10, 

95-109, 139-145, 197-198. 
Laud, William, 324-325. 
Laurence, St., by iElfric, 119. 
Lawrence, St., 298, 303. 
Layton, Dr., 315. 
Lazarus, St., 39-40. 
Lear, 84. 

Legend of Good Women, The, 239, 
* 240, 241. 
' Legenda Aurea, 39, 53-54, 172, 181, 
182, 186, 190, 192, 194, 195, 196, 
262, 272, 286, 287, 292. 
* Legenda Aurea, French transla- 
tion, 195, 241, 286. 
/ Legenda Aurea, English transla- 
tions of: 190, 194-197, 229, 286, 
290, 291. 
J Legendaries, 14, 137-139, 151-188, 
194-198, 321-324, 329, 333-340, 
344-345. 
Leger, St., 130. 



Leland, John, 288. 

Leofric, Vision of, O. E. prose, 126. 

Liberius, St., 38. 

Liber Pontificalis, 35, 104-105. 

Life and Death of Mary Magdalene, 

325-327. 
Life and Repentaunce of Mary 

Magdalene, 307-308. 
Life of Our Lady: with So. Eng. 

Leg., 163; by Lydgate, 259-260, 

290. 
Lincoln, 21. 

Lippeloo's Vitoe Sanctorum, 323. 
Literary conditions in Chaucer's 

time, 233-234. 
Lives of English Saints, by Porter, 

329. 
Lives of Saints, The, by Umfreville, 

333-334. 
Lives of Saints, The, by Petre, 334. 
Lives of the English Saints, by Bos- 

carrock, 323. 
Lives of the English Saints, The, 

Newman's, 341-344. 
Lives of the Saints, The, by Butler, 

337-340, 344. 
Lives of the Saints, by Baring- 
Gould, 344-345. 
Lives of Women Saints, 322-323. 
Local legends, 248-251, 272-279. 
Localization of cults, 39-41. 
Logic in legends, 23. 
Longinus, 303. 
Louis IX, 159. 
Lower, Sir William, 311. 
Lucius, E., 30, 42. 
Lucius of Britain, 35, 55. 
Lucy, St.: by Bokenam, 191, 193. 
Ludus Coventrioe, 301, 302. 
Luke, St., in Scot. Leg. Coll., 180. 
Lydgate, John, 188, 189, 193, 256- 

266, 274, 277, 290, 299, 305. 
Lydgate Canon, 266. 

MacCracken, H. N., 266. 
Macharius, by Robert de Gretham, 
139. 



388 



INDEX 



Maohor, St., in Scot. Leg. Coll., 180- 

181. 
Maelduib, 97. 
Maffaeus, 329. 

Malchus, history of, 124-125. 
Malory, Sir Thomas, 187, 196, 203. 
Mamas, St., 38. 
Man of Law's Tale, 239. 
Mannyng, Robert, of Brunne, 169, 

171, 200-201. 
Manuel des Pechiez, 171, 200. 
Manuscripts, errors from mis- 
taken reading of, 35. 
Mappula Anglice, 190-191. 
March, Lady, 262. 
Margaret, Queen, 258. 
Margaret, St., 34, 45, 135, 208, 209, 

210, 211, 298. 
Margaret, St.: seven Anglo-Norman 

poems, 135; by Bokenam, 190, 

191, 193-194; early 13th cent., 

208-210; Meidan Margerete, 210- 

212, 223; ibid. Auch. MS., 216; 

mid-14th cent., 231 ; by Lydgate, 

261-262. 
Margaret, Passion of St., O. E. 

prose, 125-126. 
Marguerite, Vie de ste., by Wace, 

136. 
Marie de France, 135, 218. 
Maries, L'Histoire des trois, by 

Wace, 136. 
Marina, St., 45. 
Marina, St., in Harl. 2253 and No. 

Eng. Horn. Coll., 221. 
Mark, St.: in So. Eng. Leg., 43; in 

Soot. Leg. Coll., 180. 
Marlowe, 253. 
Martha, St., 39-40. 
Martha, St., in SgoL Leg. Coll., 180. 
Martiloge in Englysshe, The, 291- 

292. 
Martin, St., of France, 35. 
Martin, St., of Tours, 35, 98, 303. 
Martin, St., of Tours: by ^Elfric, 

119, 120; Life of, in Blickling: 

Horn., 113. 



Martini, Vita ■ S., by Sulpicius 

Severus, 113, 120. 
Martyrologies, 13, 35, 95, 110-111, 

114, 115, 291-292, 321-322, 324. 

See Calendars, and Menologies. 
Martyr ologium, by Bede, 78, 102. 
Martyrology (prose, 9th cent.), 110- 

111, 115. 
Mary legends, 32-33, 51, 53, 136, 

147, 148-150, 166, 172, 177, 185, 

315, 317-318. 
Mary Magdalene, St., 39-40, 221, 

306. 
Mary Magdalene, St.: with So. Eng, 

Leg., 162, 220-221; in Soot. Leg. 

Coll., 180; by Bokenam, 189, 191, 

192; Auch. MS., 216, 220-221; 

with No. Eng. Horn. Coll., 221; 

15th cent, prose, 286; Digby MS., 

305, 306-307; by Wager, 307- 

308; Saint Marie Magdalens 

Conversion, 320-321; by Lady 

E. Falkland, 324; by T. Robin- 
son, 325-326; by Crashaw, 327- 

328. 
Mary of the Cross, The Life of, 

337. 
Mary, St., of Egypt, 45. 
Mary, St., of Egypt: O. E. prose, 

125; in Soot. Leg. Coll., 180, 183; 

Life and Death of ... s. Marie of 

JEgypt, 328-329. 
Mary, St., of Oignies, 290. 
Mary Tudor, 317. 
Massinger, Philip, 309. 
Matthew, St., 87-89. 
Matthew Paris, 144, 148, 295. 
Maurice, St., 122. 
Maximin, St., 40. 
Mediaeval Stage, The, 305. 
Medievalism of legends, 10-11, 15, 

53, 147, 149, 202, 292. 
Meinulph, St., 36. 
Memoirs of Missionary Priests, 

335-336. 
Memorial of Ancient British Piety, 

337. 



INDEX 



Menologies, 35, 77, 93, 114-115, 

266. See Calendars, and Mar- 
ty rologies. 
Menology (10th cent.), 93. 
Metcalf, F., 332. 
Metres of Anglo-Norman legends, 

137. 
Meyer, P., 133, 215. 
Meyer, W., 56. 
Michael, St., 146, 156, 206. 
Michael, St., O. E. prose, 125. 
Michael, apparition of St.: in Blick- 

ling Horn., 113; by iElfric, 119. 
Michael's Mount, St., 41. 
Mildred, St., 114; Vita by Goscelin, 

141. 
Miracle plays, 225, 252, 294-295, 

300-303, 304, 307. 
Miracles, 12-13, 22-23. 
Miraculous images, etc., 47-48. 
Miraculous transportation of relics, 

38 
Mirk, John, 184-188, 192, 247, 

280, 290. . 
Miroir des Domees, 138-139, 167- 

168. 
Modwenna, St., 135. 
Mombritius, 210. 
Monasticon, 274. 
Morality plays, 307. 
Morte Darthur, Le, 196. 
Mosaics, legendary, 52. 
MS. Arundel 168, 271. 
MS. Auchinleck, 216-221. 
MS. Blickling, 113. 
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Dd. I. 1, 

169. 
MS. Corp. Christi Coll., Oxford, 

120, 318. 
MS. Cotton Titus A. XXVI, 221. 
MS. Cotton Vitell. A. XV, 115, 125. 
MS. Digby 172, 288. 
MS. Digby 133, 305. 
MS. Exeter (Exeter Book). 91. 
MS. Harl. 149, 281. 
MS. Harl. 2253, 221. 
MS. Harl. 2277, 153. 



MS. Harl. 2391, 187. 

MS. Junius 11, 91, 92. 

MS. Laud 108, 152, 222, 229. 

MS. Laud 622, 232. 

MS. Phillips 8122, 169. 

MS. Royal Coll. of Physicians, 

Edinburgh, Ch. 5.21, 170. 
MS. Stonyhurst Coll., B. XLIII, 

282. 
MS. Thornton, 235-237. 
MS. Trinity Coll., Camb., R. 3.25, 

160. 
MS. Trinity Coll., Camb., B. 14.39, 

210. 
MS. Trinity Coll., Camb., B. 15.30, 

273. 
MS. Trin. Coll., Dublin, 319, 195. 
MS. Vercelli (Vercelli Book), 76. 
MS. Vernon, 172, 173, 194, 217, 

230. 
Munro, J. J., 285. 
Mysticism, 53, 147. 
Myth and legend, 21-22. 

Napier, A. S., 76, 113, 122, 124, 
126 n., 199. 

Napoleon, 21. 

Neckam, Alexander, 186. 

Nelson, 21. 

Neo-Platonism, 29-30. 

Neot, St., 336. 

Neot, St., Life of, 127. 

Newman, J. H., 341-344. 

Nicholas, St., 303. 

Nicholas, St., O. E. prose, 126; Vie 
de, by Wace, 136. 

Nicodemus, Gospel of: 91, 200, 214, 
302; O. E. prose, 123; early 14th 
cent., 225-226; prose transla- 
tions, 280-282. 

Ninian, St.: Vita by Ailred, 141, 
182; in Scot. Leg. Coll., 180-181, 
182. 

Norbert, St., 269. 

N orth-Ennlish Homily Collection, 
164-176, 184, 187, 213, 219, 221, 
224, 227. 



390 



INDEX 



Notre-Dame, La fete de la concep- 
tion, by Wace, 136, 200. 

Nova Legenda Anglice, 198, 268, 
291, 322. 

Oaths of Strasburg, 130. 

Odo, St., Vita by Eadmer, 141. 

CEdipus, 44, 134, 217. 

"Old Curiosity Shop," 40. 

Onesimus, St., 36. 

Oral and written legends, 25-26. 

Origen, 55. 

Osith, St., 135. 

Oswald, St., 29. 

Oswald, St.: by ^Elfric, 120; by 

Eadmer, 141. 
Overend, Miss E. M., 195 n. 
Ovid, 189. 

Owayne Myles, 231-232. 
Oxford Movement, 341, 343, 346. 

Pagan survivals in legend, 41-48. 

Palladium of Troy, 48. 

Pallas Athena, 48. 

Papula, St., 45. 

Paradiso, 240. 

Paris, William, 244-247. 

Partridge, John, 308, 317. 

Passio Sancti Procopii, 31-32. 

Passion, Northern, 175. 

Passion, Southern, 163. 

Passions, or Lives of the Saints, 
by ^Elfric, 118-120, 124 n., 
125. 

Pastoral Care, by Gregory, 92. 

Patrick, St., 38, 40, 43, 56. 

Patrick, Life of St. (by J. B. Bury), 
2, 346. 

Patrick, Purgatory of St.: five Anglo- 
Norman poems, 135; by Henry 
of Saltrey, 145; in So. Eng. Leg., 
158; Auch. MS., 216, 217-218; 
Owayne Myles, 231-232, 248; 
by Staunton, 284, 330. 

Patrick, St., for Ireland, 310; The 
Delightful History of, 330. 

Pattison, M., 342. 



Paul, St., 33, 172, 206, 222. 

Paul, St., The Conversion of, 305. 

Paul, St., Vision of, 126; Anglo- 
Norman version, 137; 12th cent., 
206; latter 13th cent, (two ver- 
sions), 222; mid-14th cent., 229- 
230, 248; by Audelay, 255. 

Paul and Thecla, 33-34. 

Paula, St., 195. 

Paulinus, St., 57, 59. 

Pearl, 209, 237. 

Pelagia, St., 45, 46. 

Pelagius, 124. 

Perpetua, St., 6, 27. 

Perseus, 44. 

Peter, St„ 33, 38, 43, 172. 

Peter, St., of Canterbury, Vita by 
Eadmer, 141. 

Peter and Paul: in Blickling Horn., 
113; with Wulfstan's horn., 122. 

Peterson, J. M., 286. 

Petre, W., 334. 

Petronilla, St., 266. 

Petrus de Natalibus, 292. 

Philip, St., 33. 

Philip of Clairvaux, 289. 

Phoenix, 125. 

Pilate, 48. 

Pistel of Swete Susan, The, see Su- 
sanna. 

Placidas, see Eustace. 

Plato, 189. 

Plays antedating cycles, 295-296. 

Poetical Translations of some 
Psalms, 325-326. 

Polycarp, St., 27, 28. 

Polychronicon, 190, 278, 280. 

Polyeucte, 311. 

Polyeuctes, or the Martyr, 311. 

Pope, Alexander, 331-332. 

Popular imagination in legends, 
18-22. 

Porter, Jerome, 329. 

Prelude, The, 84. 

Prioress's Tale, 239. 

Processus Prophetarum, with So. 
Eng. Leg., 163. 



INDEX 



391 



Prose legends, 94-127, 137-139, 
140-145, 184-188, 195-198, 201- 
202, 247-248, 280-292, 318-320, 
321-324, 324-325, 328-346. 

Pseudo-Athanasius, 25, 270. 

Pseudo-Dionysius, 30. 

Pseudo-Matthew: 200, 215, 302; 
O. E. prose, 123. 

Puns on saints' names, 38-39. 

Puritan Revolution, 328, 329, 331- 
332. 

Purple Island, The, 326. 

Purpose of legends, 1, 3-5, 13. 

Pynson, Richard, 197, 278, 288, 
292. 

Quentin, St.: Passion of, 115, 130; 

Vie de, 130. 
Quintilian, 11. 

Radegunde, St., 277-278. 
Redman, R., 260, 292. 
Reformation, effect of, 188, 207, 

248, 292-293, 295, 300-301, 313- 

315, 347. 
Regional distribution of legends, 

59, 89-90, 92, 111, 112, 114, 

153, 164, 169, 173, 224, 229. 
Relations of English and Gallican 

Churches, 115, 128-130. 
Resurrection, 303. 
Reysby, Nicholas, 284. 
Ribadeneira, 323, 324, 334. 
Rich, Robert, 144. 
Richard Cceur-de-Lion, 21, 36. 
Richard II, 244, 246. 
Richard of Cornwall, 273. 
Rimini, Council of, 56. 
Robert de Gretham, 138-139, 167- 

168. 
Robert Grosteste, 201. 
Robert of Gloucester, 153, 159- 

161. 
Robert of Knaresborough, St., 249- 

251. 
Robert of Shrewsbury, 291, 329, 

332. 



Robert of Sicily, 253. 

Robinson, Thomas, 325-327, 328. 

Roger of Wendover, 36. 

Rolle, Richard, 169. 

Rolls Series, 346. 

Roman Martyrology, 324. 

Romances, relations of, with leg- 
ends, 48-51, 133-134, 154, 157- ' 
159, 203, 211, 217, 220, 223, 
235-236, 239, 251, 319. 

Romances, legends as historical, 
30-34, 47. 

Romanticism, influence of, 346-347. 

Romeo and Juliet, 40. 

Root, R. K., 242. 

Roscarrock, Nicholas, 323. 

Ruinart, 28. 

Sacrament, see Croxton Play. 

Sacred and Legendary Art, 345. 

Saints in art, 345. 

Saints of England, The, 114-115. 

Sanctilogium Anglioe, 197. 

Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, 228. 

Savinian and Savina, Sts., 195. 

Savinianus, St., 36. 

Scandinavian invasion, effect of, 

92, 106, 128. 
Schick, J., 257, 258, 259. 
Scholarship and legends, 345-346. 
Scillitan martyrs, 27. 
Scottish Legend Collection, 176-184, 

185, 247. 
Sebastian, St., 303. 
Second Nun's Tale, see Cecilia, St. 
Seven Champions of Christendom, 

The, 310, 318-320, 330. 
Seven Deadly Sins, 228, 306. 
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, 44. 
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, by 

^Slfric, 119. 
Sexburga, St., 278. 
Shakespeare, 63. 
Shelley, P. B., 347. 
Shepherd, Augustin, 334-335. 
Shirley, James, 310. 
Sigeric, 118. 



392 



INDEX 



Sigfrid, 100. 

Simeon Metaphrastes, 241. 
Simon de Walsingham, 136. 
Sommer, E., 325, 326. 
South-English Legendary, 43, 151- 

164, 165, 166, 172, 173, 174, 175, 

176, 177, 213, 215, 216, 217, 222, 

223-224. 
Speculum Historiale, 182. 
Spenser, 319, 326. 
Staundone, R., 169. 
Staunton, William, 284. 
Stephen, St., the Proto-Martyr, in 

No. Eng. Horn. Coll., 174. 
Stephen of Siena, 290. 
Stevenson, W. H., 127. 
Strange, Lord, 254. 
S(trange), R., 330. 
Stubbs, W., 109, 346. 
Sulpicius Severus, 113, 120. 
Summa de Divinis Officiis, 186. 
Sun's rays give support, 38. 
Susanna, 238-239; by Garter, 308. 
Swithin, St., 19, 299. 
Swithin, St.: by ^Elfric, 120; by 

Goscelin, 141; in So. Eng. Leg., 

160. 
Swithini, Translatio St. Miracula 

S., 107-108. 

Tacitus, 12. 

Ten Brink, B., 68. 

Tennyson, Lord, 312. 

Teresa, A Hymn . . . to Sainte, by 

Crashaw, 328; Life of St. T., by 

Woodhead, 330, 337. 
Tertullian, 55. 
Thais, St., 45. 

Thais, by Robert de Gretham, 139. 
Theodora, St., 45, 195. 
Theodore, St., 52. 
Theodore, St., of Canterbury, 94. 
Theodoric, 38. 
Theophilus: 228; by ^lfric, 119; 

in So. Eng. Leg., 252; in No. Eng. 

Horn. Coll., 252; 15th cent., 252- 

253; by Forrest, 317-318. 



Theophilus of Constantinople, 283. 

Theseus, 44. 

Thomoe Beoketi, De Imposturis, 
300. 

Thomas, St., 33, 119, 123, 213. 

Thomas, St.: Passion of, O. E. 
verse, lost, 119; in So. Eng. Leg., 
158. 

Thomas, St., of Canterbury, 5, 8, 
22, 29, 37, 142, 155, 185, 298, 
299, 315. 

Thomas, St., of Canterbury: by 
Frere Benet, 135; by Gamier, 
135-136; Vita by John of Salis- 
bury, 142-143; in So. Eng. Leg., 
158, 161 ; in No. Eng. Horn. Coll., 
174; by John Mirk, 185; by Wade, 
277; Vita by Wm. Fitzstephen, 
296; Tennyson's Bccket, 312. 

Thomas Cantilupe, The Life and 
Gests of S., 330. 

Thomas do Chantimpre, 19, 289. 

Thopas, Sir, 226. 

Thornton, Robert, 235. 

Three Kings of Cologne, The, 282- 
283. 

Three Magi, 41. 

Thurston, H., 145. 

Tom Thumb, History of, 216. 

Towneley Plays, 301, 302. 

Tractatus de Purgatorio, 218. 

Trajan, 230. 

Translation into vernacular, 106, 
109-110, 112-114, 123-126. 

Tribulus, 35. 

Trinitarian Friars, 249-250. 

Tundale, Virion of, 248. 

Tungdali, Visio, see Tundale. 

Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr, 
311. 

Udall, Nicholas, 300, 308. 
Umfreville, Charles, 333-334. 
Unhistorical saints, 17, 18. 
Unity of legendary type, 3-5. 
Ursula, St.: by Bokenam, 191; 
Wynkyn de Worde's, 291. 



INDEX 



Usener, H., 42, 45, 46. 
Uses of legends, 13-15. 

Varnhagen, H., 230. 
Verba Seniorum, 124. 
Vere, Elizabeth, Countess of Ox- 
ford, 192. 
Veronica, 47, 48, 302. 
Veronica, O. E. prose, 123. 
Villegas, Alfonso, 323. 
Vincent of Beauvais, 182. 
Vindicta Salvatoris, 123. 
Virgin Martyr, The, 309, 310. 
Virgin Mary, 14, 32-33, 51, 53, 136, 
146-150, 163, 177, 184, 200, 208, 
213, 216, 228, 240, 244, 259, 260, 
290, 302, 303. 
Virgin Mary: Life by author of 
Scot. Leg. Coll., 177, 179; Life of 
Our Lady, by Lydgate, 259-260, 
290. 
Virgin, Assumption of: in Blickling 
Horn., 113; in So. Eng. Leg., 162; 
ibid, in Cursor Mundi, 200; ibid. 
mid-13th cent., 212-214. 
Visions, 15, 119, 122, 126, 137, 139, 
145, 146, 206, 217-218, 222, 229- 
230, 248, 255, 283-284. 
Vitce Patrum: 139, 166, 181, 200- 
201, 221; O. E. translation, 124- 
125; Anglo-Norman translation, 
137. 
Vivien (Vidien), 50. 

Wace, 136, 200. 

Wade, Laurentius, 277. 

Wager, Lewis, 307-308. 

Wakefield Plays, 301, 302. 

Warburton's cook, 310. 

Wars of the Roses, effect of, 247, 

272. 
Warwick, Earl of, see Beauchamp. 
Washington, 21. 
Watson, John, 321-322. 
Wenefred, St., 184, 185. 



Wenefred, St.: by Audelay, 256; by 
Caxton, 290; trans, of Robert 
of Shrewsbury by Griffith, and 
by Falkner, 329; reissues of 
Falkner by Metcalf and Fleet- 
wood, 332. 
Werburghe, St., 275. 
Werburghe, St.: Vita by Goscelin, 

141 ; by Bradshaw, 277-279. 
Wharton, Henry, 331. 
Whitford, Richard, 291-292. 
Widsith, 77. 
Wilbrord, St., 101; lives in Latin 

by Alcuin, 105-106. 
Wilfrid, St., 102, 103-104, 146. 
Wilfridi, Vita S., by ^Edde, 103- 

104; by Eadmer, 141. 
William de Wadington, 171, 200. 
William Fitzstephen, 296. 
William of Malmesbury, 59, 116, 

141-142, 278. 
William the Conqueror, 21, 129. 
Wilson, John, 321-322. 
Witham, Robert, 333, 334. 
Wolsey, Card., 313. 
Wonders of God in the Wilderness, 

337. 
Woodhead, Abraham, 330, 337. 
Worde, Wynkyn de, 198, 281, 291- 

292. 
Wright, W. Aldis, 160. 
Wiilker, R. P., 85. 
Wulfhad, St.,andSt.Ruffin, 273-275. 
Wulfstan, 121-122. 
Wulstan, St., in So. Eng. Leg., 160. 
Wyclif, 268, 282. 
Wygnale, John, 269. 
Wyntoun, 239. 

Yaxley, 334-335. 

York, Alcuin's poem on saints of, 

106. 
York Plays, 225, 301, 302. 

I Zupitza, J., 286. 



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